Tag Archives: notifications

Mervin Hernandez 7:04 am on February 27, 2020
Tags: , , notifications   

WP Notify Meeting Recap – February 24 2020

This is a recap of the WP Notify meeting held on Monday, February 24, 2020, 14:00 UTC. You can read the full meeting discussion here in Slack.

We focused on the next sections of the requirements document, Section 3 “Current Status”, and Section 4 “Project Goals”.

Section 3. Current Status

  • Finalized description of existing APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. features and limitations

Section 4. Project Goals

  • We continue refining the definitions of our MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia (minimum viable productMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia) a.k.a. Version 1.0
  • We outlined important research the project should include
  • We noted importance of retaining backwards compatibility of notifications handling

At the close of the meeting, @hrmervin posed the question of how/if GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ methods of notification handling can influence this project, either in short term or long term. 

Next SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. Meeting

Join us next week, where we’ll continue the discussion on the project goals, and system feature requirements. 

📅 Monday, March 2 @ 14:00 UTC

#admin, #feature-notifications, #notifications

John Blackbourn 6:04 pm on October 3, 2016
Tags: , notifications   

Feature Project Proposal: Notifications API

Most of the situations where WordPress sends an outgoing email can be classified as a notification. X just happened on your website and you should be aware of it.

Back when WordPress was a youngster, the only way to reliably notify a user was via email. In 2016 we have many more options, including push notifications to mobile platforms, desktop notifications to browsers, messages to chat apps, endless services via webhooks, SMS messages, or even notifications in the WordPress adminadmin (and super admin) area. The list goes on. For many users, email is no longer the optimal delivery mechanism for ephemeral notifications.

To that end, let’s think about replacing wp_mail() with a modern APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. that allows developers to route notifications to services other than email, allow them to better modify notifications and the way in which they’re formatted, and allow them to do so without stepping on each others’ toes.

The current lack of a notifications API (or even an email sending API) can be easily summed up:

Problem: PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party A wants to provide HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. emails, and Plugin B wants to send emails via an email delivery service such as Mandrill. Plugin C wants to disregard emails and send SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. notifications. It’s very difficult for these to co-exist.

Notification Destinations

There are only two types of destination for a notification in WordPress. Most notifications are actually notifications to a user account that get delivered via email because it’s the only contact information available for every user account. The remaining notifications are explicitly notifications to an email address rather than a user account (or not yet attached to a user account), such as when a user signs up for a blogblog (versus network, site) and needs to click a confirmation link before their user account gets created.

With this in mind, you might be able to imagine a notification class in WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. that defaults to delivering notifications via email, but which can be extended by a plugin on a per-user and per-notification basis to deliver notifications via any of the means listed above. WordPress core would support delivery via email and provide the API that allows plugins to implement delivery via other means.

With a well-designed API, multiple plugins can co-exist in order to deliver different notifications via different mechanisms, format email notifications as HTML, easily disable notifications, change the delivery mechanism for email notifications, or provide a UIUI User interface for users to manage their notification preferences and destinations.

Planning a Notifications API

I’d like to begin work on a feature project with the intent of designing and implementing such an API. I’d like to get input from authors of existing plugins that provide functionality such as delivering notifications via a service other than email, that override the default email delivery mechanism, or that implement extra notifications (such as e-commerce sale notifications), in order that the API can be backwards compatible and that we can get some plugin implementations built during the API’s development.

I already have some technical ideas regarding how the API might look, but I’m conscious that such an API needs to be well-designed before anyone jumps into writing code. Maybe we can even try some test-driven development? Who knows.

In addition, consultation and involvement with the team that are working on the two-factor authentication feature project is important as it implements several delivery mechanisms for 2FA codes that could potentially be made simpler with a notifications API.

Get Involved

Feedback is most welcome in the comments. Would you like to help out? Yes? Great. Let’s plan a date and time for a meeting in Slack and go from there.

Finally, a reminder that feature projects are not tied to a specific release of WordPress. This won’t make 4.7. It would be great if it was mature enough for 4.8, but we won’t be aiming for a particular release just yet.

#feature-plugins, #notifications

Andrew Nacin 6:22 pm on September 23, 2014
Tags: , notifications, ,   

We’ve moved the SVN and Trac firehose mailing…

We’ve moved the SVNSVN Subversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase. and TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. firehose mailing lists to lists.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/, from the legacy lists.automattic.com. If all goes well, we’ll move the rest of them over as well.

The one side effect is this is likely to break your existing mail filters. The new mailing list emails are wp-trac@lists.wordpress.org and wp-svn@lists.wordpress.org. If you’re using Gmail’s mailing list filters, those would now look like list:wp-trac.lists.wordpress.org.

For those of you who use Gmail, I’ve also added basic styling to the SVN commit emails. Hooray for reading diffs with red and green. (For those who don’t use Gmail, you’ve already been seeing styling that Gmail strips out.)

Just a reminder you don’t *need* to use the Trac firehose. You can also subscribe to individual tickets, milestones, components, focuses, new tickets, etc.

Another note: WordPress.org is now forced SSLSSL Secure Sockets Layer. Provides a secure means of sending data over the internet. Used for authenticated and private actions.. Announcement and details here.

gmail-diffs

#mailing-lists, #notifications, #svn, #trac

Andrew Nacin 10:19 pm on January 9, 2014
Tags: notifications,   

New Trac notifications feature

Monday’s long list of improvements to Trac was just the first course. Introducing per-ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. notifications.

Just above the comment box, you’ll see a new notifications pane. Here, you can watch/unwatch tickets.

This means TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.’s terrible email address CC feature is gone. (Last night, I migrated over about 15,000 CCs going back nine years.) Old comments that are just CCs are now hidden via JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors., which makes a few of the busier or popular tickets easier to skim.

You can also click the star next to the ticket number at the top:

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 4.38.22 PM

Watching a ticket adds it to some new reports: open tickets I’m watching and all tickets I’m watching. Now your list of starred tickets are all in one place.

Coming soon: You’ll be able to watch/unwatch a ticket directly from a report, like starring conversations in a Gmail inbox (edit: added). You’ll also be able to subscribe to entire components and milestones (here’s a sneak peek). And, @-mentions will let you add someone to a ticket.

A note on how this is implemented: isn’t just subscribe/unsubscribe. “Watch” can also be thought of as “Vote” or “Star” or “Favorite”. We’ll soon add a star count to reports (next to the new Comments column — edit: added). If you’re watching a ticket, you’ll always get notifications. If you’re not, you might still get notifications if you reported the ticket, or are subscribed to that ticket’s component or milestone, or if you’ve been mentioned (and the notifications box will tell you that). From there, you have the option to actively “Watch” the ticket, passively continue to receive notifications, or specifically mute/blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. notifications coming from that ticket.

Follow-up question from @sabreuse, about watching/voting/starring/favoriting: If you subscribe to the “firehose” (wp-trac mailing list) and receive all notifications anyway, should you star tickets anyway as an indication of interest? Yes, I’d say so! (If you receive the mailing list to the same email address as your WP.org profile, you’ll only receive one email. It’s possible your mail client could ascertain you received it as a BCC versus just via a mailing list, though I’m not sure.)

Feedback, ideas, suggestions are very much appreciated. Also, all of this code is open source (a lot of it is a WordPress pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party).

Edit, bonus: @ocean90 converted most icons on Trac into Dashicons.

#notifications, #trac