Email Subscriptions

Email Subscriptions

FIXME

DokuWiki allows individual users to “subscribe” to page changes. When a page is changed by a user all other users who have subscribed to that page will receive an email describing the changes. The email shows the changes in unified diff format, a sample email is shown at the bottom of this page.

The subscription facility is controlled using the subscribers configuration setting. It is turned off by default.

Note for wiki admins

Be careful in switching this facility on. In a busy wiki, with both frequent changes and many subscribers, emailing the changes to those subscribers can put a heavy strain on the webserver. In a public wiki it may also provide unscrupulous people with a way to send spam to your wiki's users.

RSS Feeds provide an alternative (and lighter) mechanism for receiving details of updates to the wiki.

.mlist files

Using the Subscriptions will create files with the extension .mlist in the ~/data/meta/ folders and subfolders. In each .mlist file are the subscribed usernames.

If you have stored the Wiki on a Windows system, you can use the following command to have a look to all files and entries:

findstr /s "." *.mlist

You can likewise use the following command on a Linux system:

grep -rH ".*" *.mlist

In either case, be sure to change to your data/meta directory first.

Issues

The changes will also be sent to the original author of the change if he/she is subscribed to the page. There is currently no way to prevent your OWN changes from being emailed to you if you are subscribed. You may however find a tip here This is now included in version 2009-02-14
Every save to a page generates an email to the subscribers. So if an editor tends to save and re-save several times during editing, the subscribers will get a large volume of emails. It may be desired to modify this plugin to send a daily digest of changes or something similar.

When enabled, this displays 2 buttons. “Subscribe Page Changes” and “Subscribe Namespace Changes”. Although you can disable Namespace Change subscription in Admin > Configuration Settings under Authentication Settings, it would be good if when disabling Namespace Changes Subscription, that it also hides the button. :!:

This is now included in version 2009-02-14

Solution for hiding buttons when action is disabled: (for DokuWiki 2008-05-05)
Edit the file inc/template.php. Find the function tpl_button($type). Find case 'subscription':
Replace:

          if($INFO['subscribed']){
            print html_btn('unsubscribe',$ID,'',array('do' => 'unsubscribe',));
          } else {
            print html_btn('subscribe',$ID,'',array('do' => 'subscribe',));
          }
          if($INFO['subscribedns']){
            print html_btn('unsubscribens',$ID,'',array('do' => 'unsubscribens',));
          } else {
            print html_btn('subscribens',$ID,'',array('do' => 'subscribens',));
          }

With this:

    if(actionOK('subscribe')){
          if($INFO['subscribed']){
            print html_btn('unsubscribe',$ID,'',array('do' => 'unsubscribe',));
          } else {
            print html_btn('subscribe',$ID,'',array('do' => 'subscribe',));
          }
    }
 
    if(actionOK('subscribens')){
          if($INFO['subscribedns']){
            print html_btn('unsubscribens',$ID,'',array('do' => 'unsubscribens',));
          } else {
            print html_btn('subscribens',$ID,'',array('do' => 'subscribens',));
          }
    }

It would be nice if the email also said who made the changes (either the logged-in username, or the IP address) - especially useful for non-public wikis. * Aha! I did some digging, and found that I simply need to include the string @USER@ in the file inc/lang/en/subscribermail.txt - sweet! This is now included by default in version 2009-02-14

Example email

Hello!

The page sample_page in the Wiki Name wiki changed.
Here are the changes:

--------------------------------------------------------
@@ -3,18 +3,18 @@
  
  ===== Section Title =====
 
- (This is some example text)
+ (This is some different example text.)
  

--------------------------------------------------------

Date        : 2009/12/25 11:19
User        : sampleuser
Edit Summary: sample edit summary
Old Revision: http://www.example.com/doku.php?id=sample_page?rev=1246611477
New Revision: http://www.example.com/doku.php?id=sample_page

To cancel the page notifications, log into the wiki at
http://www.example.com/ then visit
http://www.example.com/doku.php?id=sample_page
and unsubscribe page and/or namespace changes.

--
This mail was generated by DokuWiki at
http://www.example.com/