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manifest / email / wp-site-notifications

WP Site Notifications

A comprehensive WordPress plugin for sending customizable email notifications. Track post status changes, monitor administrative actions, and configure custom SMTP settings for reliable email delivery.

by Pedro Candeias · github.com/pedrocandeias/wp-site-notifications · website

★ 2stars
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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/pedrocandeias/wp-site-notifications/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Readme github.com/pedrocandeias/wp-site-notifications ↗

A comprehensive WordPress plugin for sending customizable email notifications. Track post status changes, monitor administrative actions, and configure custom SMTP settings for reliable email delivery.

Table of Contents

Features

Post Notifications

Track all important post status changes:

  • Post submitted for review (Pending) - When authors submit content for approval
  • Post published - When content goes live
  • Post saved as draft - When work is saved
  • Post scheduled - When future publications are set
  • Published post updated - When live content is modified
  • Post moved to trash - When content is deleted

Admin Notifications

Monitor critical administrative actions grouped by category:

User Management

  • New user registration
  • User deleted
  • User role changed

Plugin Management

  • Plugin activated
  • Plugin deactivated
  • Plugin updated

Theme Management

  • Theme switched
  • Theme updated

Core Updates

  • WordPress core updated

Security

  • Failed login attempts (rate-limited)
  • Password reset requests

Each notification group has its own email recipient, allowing you to route different types of alerts to different team members.

SMTP Configuration

Send emails through your own mail server with advanced features:

  • Server settings: Host, port, encryption (SSL/TLS)
  • Multiple email accounts: Configure different sender emails with their own credentials
  • Account selection: Automatic credential matching based on sender email
  • Test functionality: Send test emails to verify configuration

Role Management

  • Select any WordPress role to receive notifications
  • Automatic custom role detection - Works with roles from plugins/themes
  • User count display for each role
  • Visual distinction between built-in and custom roles
  • Individual user selection in addition to roles
  • Duplicate prevention (users with multiple roles get one email)

User Experience

  • Clean, HTML-formatted emails with details and action links
  • Prevents spam from autosave and revisions
  • Rate limiting on update notifications (max 1 per hour)
  • Support for custom post types

Translation Ready

  • Fully internationalized and translation-ready
  • Includes Portuguese (pt_PT) and Spanish (es_ES) translations
  • See TRANSLATION.md for adding your language

Installation

Method 1: Manual Installation

  1. Download the latest release from the Releases page
  2. Upload the wp-site-notifications folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
  4. Go to Settings > WP Notifications to configure

Method 2: WordPress Admin

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin
  2. Search for "WP Site Notifications"
  3. Click Install Now and then Activate
  4. Go to Settings > WP Notifications to configure

Method 3: WP-CLI

wp plugin install wp-site-notifications --activate

First-Time Setup

Upon activation, default settings are automatically configured:

  • Enabled notifications: Pending, Published, Scheduled
  • Default recipients: Administrators only

You can customize these in Settings > WP Notifications.

Configuration

Navigate to Settings > WP Notifications in your WordPress admin panel.

Posts Tab

Configure post-related notifications:

Notification Types

Notification Type When It's Sent
Post submitted for review Author submits a post (Pending status)
Post published Post goes live for the first time
Post saved as draft Post is saved as draft
Post scheduled Post is scheduled for future publication
Published post updated Changes are made to an already published post
Post moved to trash Post is deleted

Recipient Roles

Choose which user roles receive notifications:

Built-in WordPress Roles

  • Administrator
  • Editor
  • Author
  • Contributor
  • Subscriber

Custom Roles (Automatically Detected) The plugin automatically detects roles added by plugins, themes, or custom code.

Individual Users

Select specific users to receive notifications regardless of their role.

Post Types

Choose which post types trigger notifications (posts, pages, custom post types).

Admin Tab

Configure administrative notifications with dedicated email addresses for each group:

Group Notifications Email Field
User Management Registration, deletion, role changes Separate email
Plugin Management Activation, deactivation, updates Separate email
Theme Management Switching, updates Separate email
Core Updates WordPress updates Separate email
Security Failed logins, password resets Separate email

This allows routing different alert types to different team members (e.g., security alerts to security@company.com).

SMTP Tab

Configure email delivery through your SMTP server:

Server Settings

  • Enable SMTP: Toggle SMTP on/off
  • SMTP Host: Your mail server (e.g., smtp.gmail.com)
  • SMTP Port: Common ports - 25, 465 (SSL), 587 (TLS)
  • Encryption: None, SSL, or TLS
  • Authentication: Enable/disable SMTP auth

Email Accounts

Add multiple email accounts, each with:

  • From Email: Sender address
  • From Name: Display name
  • SMTP Username: Account credentials
  • SMTP Password: Account password

The system automatically uses the correct credentials based on the sender email address.

Default Account

Select which account to use when no specific sender is configured.

Test Email

Send a test email to verify your SMTP configuration is working correctly.

Usage

What's Included in Notification Emails

Each email contains:

  • Site information: Name and link to your WordPress site
  • Event details: What happened and when
  • Relevant data: User info, post details, plugin names, etc.
  • Action links: Quick access to relevant admin pages
  • Clean HTML formatting: Professional, readable layout

Example Post Notification

[Your Site Name]

Post Status Change

Title: "10 Tips for Better Content"
Author: John Doe
Status: Published

[View Post] [Edit Post]

Example Admin Notification

[Your Site Name]

Plugin Activated

Plugin: WooCommerce
Version: 8.0.0
Date: 2025-01-15 10:30:00

[View Plugins]

Customization

Developer Hooks

The plugin provides filter hooks for advanced customization:

Modify Email Subject

add_filter('post_notifications_email_subject', function($subject, $notification_type, $post) {
    return "Custom: " . $subject;
}, 10, 3);

Modify Email Body

add_filter('post_notifications_email_message', function($message, $notification_type, $post, $author_name) {
    return $message . "\n\nCustom footer text";
}, 10, 4);

Modify Recipients List

add_filter('post_notifications_recipients', function($recipients, $notification_type, $post) {
    // Add a specific user
    $extra_user = get_user_by('email', 'custom@example.com');
    if ($extra_user) {
        $recipients[] = $extra_user;
    }
    return $recipients;
}, 10, 3);

Technical Details

Aspect Implementation
Post Hook transition_post_status
Admin Hooks Various WordPress action hooks
Email Function WordPress native wp_mail() with optional SMTP
Rate Limiting Failed logins (5 min), post updates (1 hour)
Security CSRF protection, XSS prevention, input sanitization

Translation

The plugin is fully internationalized and ready for translation.

Available Languages

Language Code Status
English en_US Default
Portuguese (Portugal) pt_PT Complete
Spanish (Spain) es_ES Complete

Contributions are welcome! Submit your translations via pull request.

Requirements

Requirement Minimum Version
WordPress 5.0+
PHP 7.0+

Changelog

Version 2.0.0

New Features

  • Admin Notifications: Monitor user management, plugins, themes, core updates, and security events
  • SMTP Support: Configure custom mail server with multiple email accounts
  • Multiple SMTP Accounts: Different credentials for different sender emails
  • Enhanced Post Notifications: Support for custom post types and individual user selection

Improvements

  • Renamed plugin from "Post Notifications" to "WP Site Notifications"
  • Reorganized settings into tabbed interface (Posts, Admin, SMTP)
  • Group-based email routing for admin notifications
  • Better UI for notification configuration

Version 1.0.0 (Initial Release)

Features

  • 6 notification types for post status changes
  • Role-based recipient selection (including custom roles)
  • HTML-formatted email templates
  • Full translation support (pt_PT, es_ES included)
  • Developer hooks for extensibility

Security

  • CSRF token protection
  • XSS prevention
  • SQL injection hardening
  • Input sanitization and validation

Performance

  • Rate limiting (1 update notification per hour)
  • Autosave/revision filtering
  • Duplicate notification prevention

See CHANGELOG.md for detailed version history.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

Report Bugs

Found a bug? Open an issue with:

  • WordPress version
  • PHP version
  • Plugin version
  • Steps to reproduce
  • Expected vs actual behavior

Suggest Features

Have an idea? Open a feature request describing:

  • The problem you're trying to solve
  • Your proposed solution
  • Any alternative solutions considered

Submit Pull Requests

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
  5. Open a Pull Request

Code Standards

Support

Documentation

Get Help

Show Your Support

If this plugin helped you, please:

  • Star this repository
  • Share it on social media
  • Write a review

License

This plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

WP Site Notifications - WordPress Plugin
Copyright (C) 2025

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

See LICENSE file for full license text.

Made with care for the WordPress community

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