I have several active village hall clients and their sites have some kind of events / activities page. I would like to be able to automatically notify locals (who request it) by email when these pages update so they know to take a look at the website. Anyone done this / recommend a method?
Hi @Manofdogs
To notify locals by email when the events or activities pages on your RapidWeaver sites are updated, you can use the Post Office Stack from Joe Workman to manage email subscriptions directly on the site. This stack allows users to subscribe, unsubscribe, and manage their data while integrating with services like MailChimp or AWeber to send notifications. Combine this with an RSS feed for the events page, which can be generated in RapidWeaver. Users can subscribe to the feed via RSS readers, or you can connect it to automation tools like Zapier or IFTTT to trigger email notifications when updates occur.
If you happen to use Sitelok then you can create a newsletter and distribute it with a service like AWS. This is how I do it. Hope that helps.
Hi Bruno - not really what I’m after. Really thinking of something automatic - just an email that says - ‘hey, this page you’re watching has been updated - go and check what’s new’ triggered by any new content. There would be downsides in that you couldn’t even make a small edit without notifying everyone so good if it could be switched off when required. Haven’t seen anything like this however.
Hi again @Manofdogs
I don’t think there’s an internal solution within RapidWeaver to achieve what you’re looking for. However, two external tools could help. Zapier allows you to monitor changes on the events page, either through an RSS feed or directly via the URL. When a change is detected, it can automatically send an email notification to subscribers using a connected email service like Gmail or MailChimp. Changedetection.io is another option that monitors website changes and sends email notifications when updates occur. It lets you target specific parts of the page, such as event listings, to avoid unnecessary alerts. Both tools are easy to set up and provide automated notifications without manual effort. Or, last suggestion, a small script in php on the server. The problem is to know at what moment it will consider that the modification must be notified by email to the list, in short a simple question that unfortunately does not have an equally simple answer.
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Hi @Manofdogs
Your question definitely makes me think, I don’t like simple questions that remain unanswered… So I imagined something twisted (it’s not the first time) with cookies (😋). This approach uses a combination of cookies and server-side state to notify visitors about updates to a website’s content. The server maintains a unique identifier, such as a timestamp or a hash, that represents the latest content update. This identifier is updated whenever the content changes. When a user visits the site, the unique identifier is compared with a value stored in a browser cookie. If the identifier is different or the cookie is missing, it indicates that new content is available, and a notification is displayed to the user. Once the user acknowledges the notification, for example by clicking a button, the cookie is updated with the current identifier. This ensures the notification does not reappear until the content changes again. This solution informs users of updates only when necessary and avoids redundant notifications when no changes have occurred. With this base, we could then easily imagine a consent cookie to add the email address of visitors interested in receiving an email when there is an update and the sending of this email would be managed in php on the server side (it’s twisted but I warned you).
Let me know if this would be a good fit for you, and I’ll propose you some code if you want. No guarantee of proper functioning Nope 🙂↔️🤣
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Thanks for these suggestions Bruno. I was rather hoping there might be a simple internal solution I had overlooked as the site doesn’t warrant anything too complex. I suspect we will go along with manual updates via Mailchimp. I have documented your suggestions however in case they should be suitable elsewhere. :)
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