Auto subscribe registered users to one category

@david,

Have you seen the Auto-Subscribe section in the Registered Users tab of the Subscribe2->Settings page?

Yep both options I mentioned above are under the Registered Users tab.

Subscribe new users registering with your blog: Automatically
Auto-subscribe includes any excluded categories: No
Registration Form option is checked by default: Yes
Auto-subscribe users to receive email as: HTML – Full

@david,

I’ve just tested and it works fine for me. If you have compulsory categories defined they will appeared checked, but greyed out. This is so that your users are aware they are subscribed to that category but it’s not possible for them to change the setting.

For auto subscription you probably don’t need the compulsory category part. That simply makes the category send an email to all registered users every time – irrespective of their preferences.

Ah so if I’m understanding this correctly, a compulsory category would email all registered users which means they’re subscribed anyway, to that one category. Then technically we wouldn’t need to auto subscribe them. So its actually the compulsory category we need but the auto subscribe that we don’t. Is that right?

@david,

Either way will work, bear in mind that by making the category compulsory your users cannot unsubscribe unless you delete their WordPress user account. If tat suits you then compulsory is probably easier. But if you want to allow your users the freedom to opt out without you having to delete account the Auto-Subscribe way might be better.

Thanks for the tip. Auto subscribe is the better option so users can opt out. Does that work with a single category though? We only want to auto-subscribe users to an “announcements” category and leave the rest unselected. The others they can just opt in and out on their own.

@david,

I think your best way would be the following:

In Subscribe2->Settings under the Registered Users Tab:
1. Exclude all categories except for the “announcements” category
2. Make sure the “Allow registered users to subscribe to excluded categories?” is checked.
3. Enable the Auto-Subscribe settings but…
4. Make sure the “Auto-subscribe includes any excluded categories:” option is set to “no”

This will have the effect you describe above – all new users will be automatically subscribed to your announcements category but will be free to add other categories if they wish and also to unsubscribe from the announcements category.

Thanks @mattyrob.