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PmWiki /
Notify
administrators (basic)]
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The notify.php script allows a site administrator to configure PmWiki to send email messages whenever pages are changed on the wiki site. Notifications can be configured so that multiple page changes over a short period of time are combined into a single email message (to avoid flooding mailboxes).
This feature is useful for sites and pages that have infrequent updates, as it eliminates the need to frequently check RecentChanges pages just to see if anything has changed.
In order for notifications to work, the notify.php script must be enabled in the site's local customization. Usually this is as simple as placing the following in local/config.php:
Once enabled, the notification system gets its configuration from the Site.NotifyList page. The Site.NotifyList page contains entries of the form:
notify=alice@example.comThis says that information about page changes should be periodically emailed to alice@example.com. The Site.NotifyList page can contain multiple "notify=" lines to cause notifications to be sent to multiple addresses; the "notify=" lines can be concealed by placing them inside of an (:if false:) conditional section on the page.
A number of options exist for limiting the pages that result in a notification. The group= and name= parameters can be used to restrict notifications to specific pages or groups:
# send notifications about the Main group to alice@example.com
notify=alice@example.com group=Main
# notify bob@example.com of any changes to the home page
notify=bob@example.com name=Main.HomePage
# notify charles@example.com of changes to pages except in Main
notify=charles@example.com group=-Main
(Note: It looks like these are using the usual PageList syntax. More info on PageList syntax here?. -- XES)
For maintaining arbitrary lists of pages, i.e., "watchlists", it's generally easier to build a trail of pages to be watched. The following entry in Site.NotifyList will send alice@example.com an email containing changes to any of the pages listed in the Profiles.Alice trail:
# notify Alice of changes to pages listed in Profiles.Alice
notify=alice@example.com trail=Profiles.Alice
Note that once this entry has been added to Site.NotifyList, Alice can easily change her watchlist by editing the Profiles.Alice page, and doesn't need to edit the Site.NotifyList page. In particular, this means that an administrator can restrict editing of Site.NotifyList, yet allow individuals to maintain custom watchlists in other pages.
Limitations of this feature:
Controlling notification frequencyTo prevent flooding of recipients' mailboxes, the notify script uses a "squelch" value as the minimum amount of time that must elapse between messages sent to any given email address. The default squelch setting is 10800 (three hours), which means that once a recipient address is sent a notification message, it will not receive another for at least three hours. Any edits that occur during the squelch interval are queued for the next notification message. The site administrator can change the default squelch interval via the$NotifySquelch parameter
# enable notifications
In addition, individual addresses can specify a custom squelch parameter in the Site.NotifyList page:
# Alice receives at most one email per day
notify=alice@example.com squelch=86400
# Bob can get notifications hourly
notify=bob@example.com trail=Profiles.Bob squelch=3600
# Charles uses the site default squelch
notify=charles@example.com
Because a page will often receive several edits in rapid succession (e.g., a long post followed by several minor edits), a site administrator can also set a $NotifyDelay value that specifies how long to wait after an initial post before sending notifications:
# enable notifications
Note that the squelch and delay values are minimums; notifications are sent on the first execution of PmWiki after the delay period has expired. For inactive sites, this could be much longer than the specified delay periods. This isn't really considered an issue since timely notifications are less important on relatively inactive sites. (Active sites will
generally receive timely notifications.)
Note for Windows installationsSites running PHP under Windows may not have PHP's mail function configured correctly. Such sites may need to add a line like ini_set('SMTP','smtp.server.com');
to config.php, where smtp.server.com is the name of your host's preferred outgoing mail server.
Notify Variables<< Link Variables | Variables | Other Variables >>
# default
# send notifications to alice@example.com
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