Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers Plugin release
Update: NUS has been updated to work with the new Google Feedburner Accounts, please check the update page for NUS to get more information about upgrading the plugin.
I was going through my feed subscribers and was startled to see that around 50% of my email subscribers had not confirmed their subscriptions to the Techie Buzz feeds, then I saw how painful it was to send them a friendly message saying that hey I see you have not confirmed yet so why don’t you do that.
That is when the idea to develop this plugin came to my mind, it took two days of my time out of my other work but it was worth it, I can say so because it was never more easier than to have such a functionality inside my WordPress admin panel itself.
Welcome to Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers my 4th plugin yet but a long way from being my last one.
What is Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers?
NUS as I call it is a neat plugin that fetches all the subscribers who have not yet subscribed to your feed verifying themselves by clicking on the verification link in the email FeedBurner sends them.
Many users simply do not verify and thus leaving a lot of readers who do want to read your feeds cannot due to the verification email going unnoticed or landing in the spam folder.
NUS asks you for your FeedBurner username and password and fetches all those unconfirmed subscribers allowing you to send a personalized email to them asking them to verify their subscriptions.
You are asking me for my FeedBurner username and password, What will you do with it?
Relax, ask any expert to go through the code, I am asking username and password so that I can fetch your unconfirmed subscribers. What do I have to do with your username and password??
Will you support other providers other than FeedBurner too?
Well of course you can add a feature request at the NUS feature forum so that I can work on other providers.
Will it be hard for you to do that?
Well no, I created the software such that it is extendable to any number of providers, count me on that I have been in software for almost 7 years now. But remember you have to add your feature requests to NUS feature forum and I cannot promise how long it will take.
What do I need to use Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers?
To be fairly clear your server needs to have cUrl (command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax) with SSL support before you can start using NUS, without cUrl with SSL support it will not work at all and you will see a message that it does not support your blog or some weird errors altogether.
I tried using Snoopy but Snoopy uses standalone cUrl and not the built in cUrl in PHP. So I had to turn over to this. Please give me some time to write the library for supporting every blog am sorry but assure you that I will do it. Your feature requests should be added to the NUS feature forum not in the comments please.
Why do I need cUrl?
I needed cUrl support because the FeedBurner site requires login over a https (SSL protocol) and I did not have enough time to write a library to take care of it. Rest assured future versions of this plugin will work on every site even without cUrl support. Please give me some time to write the library for supporting every blog am sorry but assure you that I will do it. Your feature requests should be added to the NUS feature forum not in the comments please.
Why is it slow?
Come on, I churned out the code in two days flat, give me some time to optimize it :-)
Will it be faster?
Of course it will be much faster in future releases.
Will you provide support for it in the future?
Very much like the other plugins I have created I will provide support till the end, there is just a little change that all support requests should be posted in the NUS support forum and not in the comments.
Does it have bugs?
Of course it does but you can help me make it better. What do you expect out of two days and like I said please post all bugs in the NUS support forum.
What about spamming?
NUS maintains a log of emails to whom a message has already been sent, so you do not have to worry about sending the message to the same user again.
What if I want to do that?
You are spamming.
If I want to spam then?
I can’t do it, you have to do it manually :-).
What if I want to send all my subscribers a message?
You can fetch them manually by logging into your FeedBurner account and downloading your subscribers emails, and then send them a email.
Do I support languages other than English for this?
Not yet, but surely in future. I do not have a non English account, so anyone will to help with a non English account is welcome.
How does it work?
Well now that you asked, here is how Notify Unsubscribed subscribers works. Many users may have more than one feeds in their FeedBurner account and if it is case after step 4 you will get a link to repeat the process from step 2-4. NUS will fetch all the information for all your feeds in step 1 so you do not need to repeat it over and over again, unless you are fetching new unconfirmed subscribers again.
Step 1
Enter your FeedBurner username and password and NUS will fetch all your feeds and their unconfirmed subscribers.
NUS Page
Authentication failed
Step 2
Will fetch all results and ask you to select which one you want to send a message to
Step 3
Add your customized message
Step 4
Done. Repeat it for other feeds.
How do I download it?
Please visit the Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers on WordPress extend to download the plugin.
Can I donate to you?
Well you are being so kind, there is a donate button too, below and in the sidebar I would be excited to receive your support. Thanks.
Donate
If you think this software is useful to you, you can make a small donation.
License
All files and their contents are licensed under the General Public License (GPL).
Version Info
0.1 Released October 1st 2007
If you have any problems please use the forums to report about it to me.
Related Topics Similar to This Article: »
Recent Activity: »
Author: Keith Dsouza
I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website.I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.Keith Dsouza has written 4449 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at keith@techie-buzz.comComment Using Facebook
104 Responses to this Article | Share your Opinions/Comments
We moderate comments to prevent spam. Moderation is done within few hours. Please try and stay on topic and refrain from using abusive language. If you think there is a problem with this post, please email the post author or send us an email at tips@techie-buzz.com with the URL and the problem you see and we will rectify it as soon as we can.
Hi Keith,
Another great plugin. Really appreciate your efforts.
3 Cheers to you!
Mani
Keith…Where do I get the options page from? I don’t see it at the OPTIONS tab, neither there is a NUS tab. Am i missing something?
Mani you will find the plugin under the Manage tab.
today when I checked my email subscriptions, I found that there are around 40 email subscriptions which are not verified. Let me try this plugin. :-)
Nice plugin keith.
Glad you liked the plugin Nirmal, it was really a pain to notify each of the emails personally so I came up with this to help bloggers a bit.
Hey keith! that’s a wonderful plugin! will use it for sure. Will love to see more and more plugins coming from your way :)
@ReviewSaurus I am glad you liked the plugin and definitely there will be many more coming your way in future.
Hey Keith..
It did work for me without any errors. And it didn’t too long..it was in a snap, I had 43 pending subscriptions.
Let’s see how many of them turn up…Thanks much my friend.
Di you receive my donation?
Mani Karthik
Keith sorry for spamming…yikes the donation button takes me to a page not found error message. kindly give me your paypal id can you?
Hey Mani,
No you are not spamming and thanks for letting me know that the Donate button is broken will fix it. And a big Thank you for your donation.
Great plugin. Looks like you’re a very creative person.
Hoping Probloggers will take note of this. It’d be great if many people spread the information about your plugin :)
Thanks for the praises Shankar. I will be working more on creating more such plugins in the future which are helpful to bloggers.
Now this one is a fantastic plugin…really makes life much easier…I have atleast couple hundred unverified subscribers, however, what I did was manually sent them emails in batch of 10s and 20s…normally the conversion ratio in this kind is around 20% to 30%. The problem is that even with re-mailing..the message lands in their spam box…what do you do in such a case…when after couple attempts too the potential subscribers does not see the mail in his inbox ?
Anyways..this makes life much easier…
@India Business Blog glad you liked the plugin, I had in mind making the task of notifying people easier when I started creating the plugin. Glad to see it has hit the right spot
OOPS!! Seems you provided a wrong user name and password. Please try again.
Thats what i get, and im 100% sure im using my right login details (i even logged out and in to be sure)
any ideas?
Thanks Keith for the excellent plugin! It provides a much needed solution.
How does the user know how to confirm their subscription? Is that something that I have to provide in the message, or is a link automatically included?
You can provide them with a link to the email subscription once again in the message.
Hey Ankesh glad you liked it :-)
this is such an excellent plug-in! was able to notify at least 200 unconfirmed subscribers in a matter of minutes :) thank you very much!
Hey marhgil, glad it was of use to you.
What are all of you including in the message you send out? You can’t include the original verification link as it is different for each person, so how do you explain to them how to verify their e-mail? Do they have to resubscribe from your site? Visit Feedburner?
Keith,
I’m getting the following error when attempting to install in WP 2.3:
Any idea what could be causing this rather cryptic message? I don’t know if my machine has cURL installed on it or not? (Not even sure how to check.)
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
This may be a cause because low memory is allocated to run PHP. Do you see any memory errors.
Keith
Has anyone actually tried this plugin? What message does it send to a user? If all it does is send your custom message to everyone, I’d consider that spam, since it in no way helps them confirm their feedburner account. Someone mentioned that you can ‘send a link for them to subscribe’. How? How can I Send a link to hundreds of people that will help them confirm their subscriptions? I love the concept of this, but not knowing what my users will receive, or how it will help them become subscribers seems to be a big shortcoming.
I too am getting a “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.” Not sure what is causing this – any ideas for this one?
Todd
Keith, never knew you made plugins !!!
Reached here seaching for a plugin. Gonna try this
Thanks, Cheers bro!
Great plugin. However it does not include a link in the email so be sure to direct your unconfirmed subscribers. Tell them to look in their mailbox/spambox. Is there a way to include the acual feedburner link? I don’t think so.
Thank you Keith. I used this plugin for my recipe blog. To 1200 unconfirmed subscribers. I hope they will be sign up again.
excellent plugin. but doesnt work for me (:
getting error msg, ‘Authentication failed’ repeatedly
Hey keith you don’t know what you have just give to me.
Nice plugin..
Doesnt work for migrated feed(feedburner.google.com).
Please email me