bbPress Notify (No-Spam)

Description

The most powerful new topic and reply notification system for bbPress and also BuddyBoss, giving your forum users a personalized experience.

New! We’ve launched a Facebook Group to discuss all things bbpnns: Better Forum Notifications with bbPress Notify (No-Spam).

Features include

• Send notifications in HTML, Plain text, or Multipart format, with full image support.
• Replace original subscription messages with personalized ones of your own;
• Set Notification recipient roles for new topics and/or replies;
• Send Background Notifications (to avoid delays in loading pages for large user databases);
• A nifty Dry Run tool to help you understand who would be receiving notifications given the selected settings;
• Extensible through dozens of actions and filters;

Click here for the full documentation.

Premium Add-Ons

Take your notifications to the next level with one or more of these add-ons.

• Reply by Email Add-on: Users can create new topics or replies directly from their mailbox. No need to click links or open the forums in a browser. Heck, they can even dictate their topics/replies if they want!
• Bulk Mailer Add-on: Having trouble with mailout timouts because you have too many users? This is the solution. Integrate bbpnns with Mailgun or SendGrid and send messages in batches of 1000 instead of one-by-one.
• Digest Add-on: Users can choose to receive daily, weekly, or monthly digests.
• Opt-out Add-on: Users can choose not to receive any notifications, or simply unsubscribe from the thread with a single click. A must-have for CAN-SPAM and CASL laws!
• bbPress Moderation Integration: Make bbpnns work with bbPress Moderation.
• bbPress Private Groups Integration: Make bbpnns respect bbPress Private Groups rules.
• BuddyPress Integration: Notify BuddyPress Group members of new Group Forum topics and replies. It also shows individual Opt Out and Digest settings in each user’s BuddyPress profile screen. Compatible with BuddyBoss!
• MemberPress Integration: Make sure your members have access to Opt Out and Digest settings in their MemberPress profile screens, and only get notified of topics/replies they have access to.
• Ultimate Member Integration: Make sure your members have access to Opt Out and Digest settings in their Ultimate Member profile screens.
• AccessAlly Integration: A must for those using AccessAlly, so their users won’t receive notifications for forums they don’t have access to.
• LearnDash Integration: Play nicely with LearnDash user restrictions to forums.

Screenshots

Installation

1. Upload the entire plugin folder via FTP to /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. Go to the bbPress Notify (No-Spam) in the main admin menu -> Settings to customize the settings.

FAQ

I’m using BuddyBoss instead of bbPress. Does this plugin work for me?

• Yes! BuddyBoss forked bbPress and kept all of the inner workings. This means that anything that works with bbPress will also work with BuddyBoss.

Why am I not receiving notifications of a topic/reply that I created?

• Make sure the setting to notify authors of their own posts is checked in both the Topics and Replies screen.

Where are the settings?

• As of version 2.0, the settings are no longer in the Forums screen but have their own location in the Admin menu area.

People are getting timeouts when posting a new Topic or Reply. Why?

• When a new Topic or Reply is created, bbpnns is triggered to send notifications regarding that new post. If there are too many recipients, it may take too long for bbpnns to iterate through the recipient list and the web server will throw a timeout message; the person posting it will think their message didn’t get saved. To get around this problem, turn on the option to send messages in the background. That will create a scheduled action for the next time the wp-cron runs, and bbpnns will try to override any time limits while running.

Why are some of my users not getting notified?

• If you have not turned on Background Notifications, see the FAQ item above. If you have turned it on and some users are still not getting notified, it could be that your host is not letting bbpnns finish doing its thing, even though the timeout settings have been overridden. Some hosts will have scripts monitoring long running processes and have them killed, regardless of the PHP timeout values. A solution for this is to have bbpnns work faster, and for that we’ve released the Bulk Mailer add-on which connects with an existing Mailgun or SendGrid account and sends notifications to up to 1000 recipients in the time it would otherwise take to send to a single one.

Can a user turn off notifications?

• Originally, this plugin was developed to alert Administrators of new topics and replies. After a few iterations, users requested the ability to send messages to other roles, which could then be characterized as spam. To allow your users to opt-out from receiving notifications, please consider purchasing the Opt-out Add-on or disable per-role notifications in favor of Overriding Core Subscriptions.

Does this plugin integrate with BuddyPress?

• Out of the box, no. However, you can get BuddyPress Group notification functionality using our premium bbpnns/BuddyPress Bridge plugin.

Does this plugin integrate with X, Y, Z Membership/Privacy plugin?

• We can’t add support for all sorts of third party plugins inside the core bbpnns plugin. It would become way too bloated. However, we do support some of the more popular membership and privacy plugins such as Private Groups, MemberPress, AccessAlly and Ultimate Member. See the Premium Addons section above for the links to each one. If you’re using a different plugin and need support, reach out and let us know.
  We’ll look into adding it.

Can this plugin be customized?

• If you have some WordPress coding experience, customizing should be really easy as we offer dozens of filters and actions. However, if you need help, reach out and let us know your specs for an estimate.

Reviews

Excellent support

Jonathan November 14, 2022 1 reply

I had an issue with a premium add on to this plugin and the author was very responsive and helpful. Highly recommend.

Best plugin for forum

hiteshtecharck July 5, 2022 1 reply

Thank you for your plugin

Thanks!

Scott Tyrus Washburn December 27, 2021 1 reply

I just installed this plugin. Thanks for solving this problem! Often my visitors are expecting to hear from me directly, so I need notifications to help me remember to check for any pending (hidden) topics. I am hopeful that this plugin will help me know when my visitors are trying to communicate with me using the forums. I also would like to get a notification on the WordPress admin back-end of the site whenever there is a pending (hidden) topic, or a new topic I have not yet viewed. Is this a feature that could be added?

Because WordPress Email Notifications Generally Suck

Llewen August 6, 2021 3 replies

there’s this plugin, and it’s free, and it works. You can’t say that about much these days. Thank you to the developers for the time and work they’ve put into this.

bbpress’s own mail function sucks. Notify plugin solves the problem.

skylabb April 3, 2021

I had a problem with bbpress sending out notification messages to noreply@ address and no forum subscribers could receive notification messages. After installing bbPress Notify, my problem is solved! Forum notifications are sent correctly and subscribers get them. Thank you.

Amazing support!!

taliabarlev February 8, 2021

I have never seen such support as professional and patient. Huge thanks!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.19

• Add Action Scheduler support.

2.18.5

• Fix load_plugin_textdomain to work with 6.7.1.

2.18.4

• Address vulnerable code.
• Updated tested up to.

2.18.3

• Safely handle users with missing roles.
• Update tested up to.

2.18.2

• Fix missing fields required by add-ons.
• Update tested up to.

2.18.1

• Fix missing user fields from tag replacements.

2.18

• Streamline amount of user data loaded to reduce memory footprint.
• Fix deprecated notices under PHP8.

2.17.10

• Also remove BuddyBoss notifications when inside ajax requests.

2.17.9

• Remove notifications action set by BuddyBoss.

2.17.8

• Allow adjusting dry-run post status via filter.

2.17.7

• Fix notices on add-ons page.

2.17.6

• Make sure we get an actual user from the database in user_ok_role. Return false otherwise.

2.17.5

• Return false in user_ok_role if user not logged in.

2.17.4

• Change approach to checking for user role as it was sometimes failing.

2.17.3

• Fix missing bridge warnings when using WPFusion or BP Moderation Tools.

2.17.2

• Make sure blocked users do not get notifications.

2.17.1

• Made a couple of tweaks to support PHP 8. See https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/php-8-compatibility-changes/

2.17

• Added support for author details tags: author-first_name, author-last_name, author-display_name, author-user_nicename.

2.16.1

• Added more bridge warnings in the settings.

2.16

• Adjusted translation text-domain.
• Adjusted support instructions and tested-up-to version.

2.15.3

• Disabling autoembed for buddyboss during mailout as it makes images lazy-load.

2.15.2

• Fix possible memory leak if admin creates a topic in the back end and forgets to assign a forum.

2.15.1

• Fixed bug loading users by roles when no role was selected.

2.15

• Added From Name and From Email fields to Support > General
• Added filter ‘bbpnns_from_name’ to filter From Name
• Added Filter ‘bbpnns_from_email_address’ to filter From Email
• Improved performance loading users by role.

2.14

• Elegant fix for UTF-8 subject line issues.

2.13.3

• Added filters for topic/reply subject and body to help with translation, etc.
• bbpnns_raw_{$type}_subject – $type is either topic or reply
• bbpnns_raw_{$type}_body – $type is either topic or reply

2.13.2

• Force replace long dash entity with regular dash before sending out the message.

2.13.1

• Fix catcheable error in get_topmost_forum_link method.

2.13

• Introducing topmost-forum tag.
• Fixed call to get WP error message on edge case.

2.12.1

• Check that subscribed users really do exist before adding them to the recipient list.

2.12

• Prefer mb_encode_mimeheader() over iconv_mime_encode() for UTF-8 subject lines, if available.
• Added extra debugging information to Support tab.

2.11.1

• Attempt to fix UTF-8 subject line encoding for some email clients.

2.11

• Removing autoembed for topics and replies as they get filtered out of the final notification email.

2.10

• Added context to tag methods so we can support different tags for email subject line and body.

2.9.5.1

• Fixed typo in previous commit.

2.9.5

• Also stop core bbPress Notifications if roles or author-notifications are in effect.

2.9.4

• Better control/stopping of core bbPress Notifications.

2.9.3

• Add X-Auto-Response-Suppress: All header to the mailout.

2.9.2

• Introduced bbpnns() function as wrapper to get global $bbPress_Notify_noSpam object.
• Making $bbPress_Notify_noSpam->load_lib() public for ease of use.
• Changed priorities for bbp_new_topic/bbp_new_reply so they can be overridden in time.

2.9.1

• Fixed bad private forum redirect for sites that don’t use pretty permalinks.

2.9

• Added option to automatically subcribe new users to all forums.

2.8.3.1

• Fixed pesky wpautop adding extra br tags.

2.8.3

• Add $user_info parameter to bbpnns_skip_notification notification to reduce DB lookups.

2.8.2

• Added filter bbpnns_redirect_url to allow adjusting the redirect URL for non-public forums.

2.8.1

• Enhancement – better user control when running in the background.

2.8

• Added new feature – Auto subscribe forum users to newly created topic so they also get replies notifications. See bbPress Notify (No-Spam) > Settings > Topics tab > bbPress Forums Subscriptions Override section.
• Added i18n files.

2.7

• Work around membership plugins blocking content during mailouts.

2.6.1

• Added support for bbpress 2.6 moderation functionality.

2.6

• Changed behaviour of notify_authors checkbox: Originally it would only remove authors if they were already in the recipient list. Now it will also add authors if they’re not in recipients and the setting is checked.

2.5.7

• Call bbp_new_topic and bbp_new_reply in Dry Run with full param list to avoid breaking third-party plugins.

2.5.6

• Fix login controller’s maybe_add_redirect() to use given URL instead of pulling the permalink from the DB.

2.5.5

• Fix dry-run sending messages when run with background notifications enabled.

2.5.4

• Pass reply-url through login query string logic.

2.5.3

• Add safeguards to dry-run to keep bbpress from sending notifications.

2.5.2

• Fix nonce handling in old 1.x to 2.x db conversion.

= 2.5.1 –
* Better encoding of href variables in convert_images_and_links().

2.5

• Added ability to include forum subscribers in a reply notification.
• Improved trace messages.

2.4

• Added feature: Dry run tests to help identify which settings are adding/dropping which users from the recipient list.

2.3.1

• Encode href variable in convert_images_and_links() if necessary.

2.3

• Added action bbpnns_doing_notify_on_save.

= 2.2.1=
* Fix: Lines ending in
were being wrapped in

tags.

2.2

• Enhancement: Call set_time_limit() when running as cron to try to avoid timeouts.
• Enhancement: No longer embed images as some sites don’t use PHPMailer to allow attaching them.
• Enhancement: Add support for [date] tag in email subjects and bodies. Accepted parameter is format and values are those accepted by the date() function. It defaults to WP’s date and time values in Settings > General.

2.1.13.2

• Fix: make new argument forum_id optional for backwards compatibility with other plugins/customizations.

2.1.13.1

• Fix: missed one instance of the bbpnns_topic_url filter in previous commit.

2.1.13

• Added feature: Topic and reply urls in private forums now go through the login screen instead of throwing a 404 error.

2.1.12

• Replace filename with basename in image attachments as filename did not have the extension.

2.1.11

• Make render_template() public.

2.1.10

• Set default has_sidebar value for settings screen.

2.1.9

• Fix: Edge case where add_settings_error() was being called too soon.

2.1.8

• Fix: Fixed undefined property notice in Settings screen.

2.1.7

• Fix: Properly handle Subject line entity decoding when UTF-8 subject line option is selected.

2.1.6

• Fix: Adjusted priority of ‘init’ as it was causing weird issues in some cases.

2.1.5

• Fix: Add missed do_action( ‘bbpnns_register_settings’ ) call to admin_core.

2.1.4

• Fix: Race condition between bbpnns and Moderation Tools for bbPress plugin.

2.1.3

• Enhancement: Some third-party plugins are suppressing the database update notice with the button. Added a shortcut to force the upgrade. Use ?bbpnns_force_convert=1 query parameter in any Admin screen to force the update.

2.1.2

• Fix: Some 1.x installs had non-array values for recipient roles. Normalizing them to avoid errors.

2.1.1

• Fix: Role recipients settings field was not accepting an empty list.

2.1

• Fix: Normalizing recipient roles from bad 1.x -> 2.0 conversion. This also fixes cases where some add-ons can’t display the user preferences in their profile screens.
• Fix: Normalizing background notifications settings that were unified – previously we had one for topics and one for replies.
• Added: Converting entities to their characters in subject line if UTF-8 subject is enabled.
• Fixed: Removing duplicate notifications (bbpnns + bbpress core) in some scenarios.

= 2.0.5.1=
* Removed debugging left behind in previous commit.

2.0.5

• Fix: better handling of roles in topics and replies settings tabs.

2.0.4.1

• Fix: Corrected instance of legacy options check.

2.0.4

• Fix: Occasionally the background notifications settings checkbox would not uncheck.

2.0.3

• Fix: Typo in previous commit causing set_notice() errors.

2.0.2

• Fix: Defer conversion check to ‘init’ action as some installs were croaking with ‘undefined function add_settings_error’
• Enhancement: Add support for certain add-ons to display their settings in the main bbpnns settings screen.

2.0.1

• Fix: 1.x -> 2.x converter bug not saving settings correctly.

2.0

• Major rewrite, added better settings screen and add-on interface.

1.18.6

• Improvement: Support for environments that do not provide mb_convert_encoding().

1.18.5

• Fix: Fix PHP notice by setting default value to wp_mail_error property in case third-party mailers fail and don’t call the wp_mail_error action.

1.18.4

• Fix: Correctly handle DOMDOcument calls on PHP older than 5.3.6.

1.18.3

• Fix: Added back the filters to stop default notifications in some cases where removing the core notification action wasn’t working.

1.18.2

• Fix: Future Publish was not working.
• Fix: Better handling of blocking bbPress core notifications if Overrides is on, to make sure we don’t send out multiple messages (ours plus the default one).
• Cleanup: Commented out some notifications code that are no longer relevant.

1.18.1

• Updated Tested up to
• Added improved admin notice code and bbpnns-rbe April/2018 promo.

1.18

• Added support for topic-content and topic-excerpt tags in replies.
• Added check and warning of needed bridge plugins to play nicely with supported membership/permission plugins.

1.17

• Fix: notify_on_save was not handling future dated publishing at all.

1.16.2

• Fix DOMDocument to work with non-UTF8 characters. Thanks to @yinbit for the testing environment.

1.16.1

• Don’t assume UTF-8 loading the text in DOMDocument to process image CIDs and convert links.

1.16

• Add support for embedded images in notifications.
• Capture case when topic_id does not get passed to notify_new_reply()

1.15.11

• Adjust parameters for send_notification().

1.15.10

• Add post type, topic/reply id and forum id to send_notification() so they can be used in bbpnns_filter_email_body_for_user and bbpnns_filter_email_subject_for_user filters.

1.15.9.1

• Fix: Removed debugging left behind in 1.15.9

1.15.9

• Decode quotes in topics and body.

1.15.8

• Refactor topic-url code in reply notifications to improve performance.

1.15.7

• Added support for topic-title, topic-author, and topic-author-email tags in the reply subject.

1.15.6

• Remove surety message.

1.15.5

• Fix: apply bbpnns_topic_url filter when processing topic_url inside a reply as well.

1.15.4

• Added: bbpnns_core_subscribers filter.

1.15.3

• Added: topic-title, topic-author, and topic-author-email tags are now available in replies.

1.15.2

• Fix: unchecked iconv function was breaking some installs.

1.15.1

• Fix: Plain text mailouts had broken UTF-8 characters.

1.15

• Added: bbpnns_is_in_effect filter to help identify if Core Overrides are on or if a user belongs to a notifiable role.

1.14.3

• Fix: Correctly handling encoded entities.
• Fix: Check that iconv_mime_encode is available before trying to use it.
• Added: bbpnns signature in email headers to help with troubleshooting.

1.14.2

• Fix: Multipart messages are now working nicely with Mailgun and regular wp_mail calls.
• Added: HTML to text converter is now handling images, replacing the html with their alt value.

1.14.1

• Fix: Mailgun is replacing our multipart/alternative header boundary, so now admins can chose whether to send HTML, Plain Text, or Multipart messages.

1.14

• New: WYSIWYG emails, complete with automatic multipart text version for non HTML clients.
• New: Added user-name tags support.

1.13.1

• Fix: Bad copy/paste on previous commit, which replaced the body with the subject line.

1.13

• New: Added tags to get topic and reply author email.

1.12

• New: Take over notifications for bbPress’ Core Subscriptions
• New: Decide whether authors must receive their own notifications or not

1.11.1

• ISIPP/SuretyMail partnership announcement.

1.11

• Added: calling set_time_out(0) if doing cron. This should help people who are not getting all mailouts sent due to too many recipients.

1.10

• Minor bug fix: [topic-forum] and [reply-forum] tags were missing from list of available tags, although functionality was fine.
• Add: [topic-url] is now available in replies, too.

1.9.4

• New Feature: No longer add topic/reply author to the recipient list.

1.9.3

• Fix: Replace mb_internal_encoding() with iconv_get_encoding() as at least one host didn’t have mb_string enabled.
• Add: Admin option to enable or disable Subject line encoding. Admin -> Settings -> Forums -> E-mail Notifications -> Encode Topic and Reply Subject line.
• Add: uninstaller.

1.9.2

• Fix filters bbpnns_filter_email_subject_in_build and bbpnns_filter_email_body_in_build to pass $type and $post_id

1.9.1

• New action: bbpnns_email_failed_single_user, allows for better handling of failed emails. Params: $user_info, $filtered_subject, $filtered_body, $recipient_headers
• New action: bbpnns_before_wp_mail, executed immediately before wp_mail() call. Params: $user_info, $filtered_subject, $filtered_body, $recipient_headers
• New action: bbpnns_after_wp_mail, executed immediately after wp_mail() call. Params: $user_info, $filtered_subject, $filtered_body, $recipient_headers

1.9

• New Filter: bbpnns_skip_notification
• New Filter: bbpnns_available_tags
• New Action: bbpnns_after_email_sent_single_user
• New Action: bbpnns_after_email_sent_all_users
• Change: Only filter subject and body if user is OK to receive message
• Change: Reduce DB calls by one per user
• Change: stop using PHP4-style pass-by-reference. PHP5 always passes by reference now.
• Change: Improve Encoding of subject line

1.8.2.1

• Fix: added a workaround for emails with UTF-8 Characters in the subject line that weren’t being sent.

1.8.2

• Added: support for people using wpMandrill and getting emails without newlines. We turn on nl2br momentarily while sending out our emails.
  This option can be overridden by using the filter ‘bbpnns_handle_mandrill_nl2br’.

1.8.1

• Fix: no longer return if wp_mail fails for a given email address. This was an issue for people using wpMandrill with an address in the blacklist.

1.8

• New Filter: bbpnns_post_status_blacklist
• New Filter: bbpnns_post_status_whitelist
• New Action: bbpnns_before_topic_settings
• New Action: bbpnns_after_topic_settings
• New Action: bbpnns_after_reply_settings
• New Action: bbpnns_register_settings

1.7.3

• Remove admin message as it’s not getting dismissed properly.
• Update tested up to.

1.7.2

• Fix parameters for ‘bbp_new_reply’ filter
• Added call to ‘bbp_get_reply_forum_id()’ in case the forum_id was blank (should no longer happen with ‘bbp_new_reply’ filter fix)

1.7.1

• Notify about existence of Opt-Out add-on

1.7

• Added support for Opt-Out add-on
• Added labels to all input fields

1.6.7

• Added support for tags [topic-forum], and [reply-forum]. (Towfiq I.)

1.6.6.1

• Removed Pro message.

1.6.6

• Added subject filter in _build_email: bbpnns_filter_email_subject_in_build
• Added body filter in _build_email: bbpnns_filter_email_body_in_build
• Renamed filter: bbpnns-filter-recipients => bbpnns_filter_recipients_before_send
• Renamed filter: bbpnns-filter-email-subject => bbpnns_filter_email_subject_for_user
• Renamed filter: bbpnns-filter-email-body => bbpnns_filter_email_body_for_user

1.6.5

• Added user-contributed filters: bbpress_reply_notify_recipients, and bbpress_topic_notify_recipients

1.6.4

• Added filters: bbpnns-filter-recipients, bbpnns-filter-email-subject, and bbpnns-filter-email-body

1.6.3.1

• Fixed: buggy dismiss link in previous commit.

1.6.3

• Added notice about bbPress Notify Pro project at Kickstarter.

1.6.2

• Fix bug where topic and reply post_types were not set in time to send post.
• Only send notification if post_status is publish, besides not being spam.
• Adjustments to notify_on_save
• Added tests for notify_on_save

1.6.1

• Passing $post_id and $title variables to filters added in 1.6.

1.6

• Added support for filters ‘bbpnns_topic_url’, ‘bbpnns_reply_url’, and ‘bbpnns_topic_reply’

1.5.5

• Improved Tests
• Renamed some variables.

1.5.4

• Fix: Make sure bbPress is installed and avoid race conditions when loading.

1.5.3

• Fix: corrected missing newlines in topic/reply content email.

1.5.2

• Fix: admin-only emails not working due to missed boolean casting.

1.5.1

• Fixed bug, ‘hidden forum override reply’ setting not registered
• Added filters: bbpnns_skip_topic_notification, bbpnns_skip_reply_notification, bpnns_excerpt_size, bbpnns_extra_headers

1.5

• Added override option to only send emails to Admins in case a Forum is hidden.
• Added tests

1.4.2

• Tweak: make sure we have unique recipients. In some installs, duplicate emails were being sent.

1.4.1

• Fixed: preg_replace error in some installs.

1.4

• Fixed: Strict notices.
• Added: Settings link in Plugins page.
• Added: Logging failed wp_mail call.
• Added: Option to send notifications when adding/updating a topic or reply in the admin.
• Added: Enforce replacement of
  tags for newlines.

1.3

• New: Added background notifications

1.2.2

• Fixed: bug that was sending emails to everyone if no role was saved.
• Fixed: no longer using ‘blogadmin’ as default, but ‘administrator’ upon install.

1.2.1

• Added back old plugin deactivation
• Bug fix for topic author not displaying when anonymous by Rick Tuttle

1.2

• Improved role handling by Paul Schroeder.

1.1.2

• Fixed edge case where user doesn’t select any checkbox in recipients list.
• Array casting in foreach blocks.

1.1.1

• Fixed load_plugin_textdomain call.

1.1

• Fixed methods called as functions.

1.0

• No-spam version forked.