1. Quick overview

The extension sends emails when someone adds/modifies an article at your Joomla web-site. Sending of emails can be restricted by categories, article ids, user groups, particular users. You can turn of email sending for modification done by a patticular user or user groups. Or vice versa, enable notification only for particular articles, users or user groups.

The email may optionally contain author/modifier name, date, article title, intro and/or full text overview (HTML is converted to text).

The email may contain links to view articles and to edit articles (one must be logged in to follow such links successfully).

See example:

2. When is it needed?

Here are some situation when NotifyArticleSubmit can be usefull

• You are a web-site creator and your clients manage articles themselves at a web-site created by you. Very often clients make many mistakes till they learn like giving wrong titles, assigning to wrong sections and so on. So you may want to controll what they add to correct them in time. Each time an article is added you are informed via email and may check it.
• You allow users to add articles from frontend and want to be informed (or inform your stuff), when someone adds an article.
• You want to inform a certain group of users or all users about new articles published at your web-site (be carefull of mass mailing issues in this case).

3. Installation

Install the extensions like a regular joomla extension.

3.1. Upgrade

Uninstallation of previous version is not needed. Just install the newer version.

3.2. Joomla 1.5 installation note for Joomfish compatibility

When installing the extension file administrator/components/com_joomfish/contentelements/plugins.xml is overwwritten if exists. I give 99.9%, that it doesn't as I have never meet any other plugin needed to be translated. But if it exists before ther installation of NotifyArticleSubmit you must combine the existing one with the file from the install package. When uninstalling the file is also removed. Preserve it if it's really needed. But again, 99.9% that you don't have to care about it.

3.3. Joomla 1.5 uninstall

NotifyArticleSubmit is installed usign a special component, which purpose is to prefom some operation while installing and uninstalling the plugin. So to uninstall the plugin you must uninstalle not plugin NotifyArticleSubmit, but component NotifyArticleSubmit.

4. Settings

By default plugin sends messages to all superadmins on any article change (add/update/publish/unpublish).

The settings are divided into three groups. The smallest one is the General group, which has 2-3 settings depending on joomla version.

Next two groups are For regular users and For admin users.

These groups are mostly logical ones. The only difference for the Admin groups is a bunch of settings for current article modifier and article author - weather to inform and in in which way.

The purpose of these two logical groups is to let you set separate rules for users and groups of users whish you decide to be admin users and regular users. Too complicated.

Here is an example. Let's imagine you want all registred users to recieve notifications when an article is published,

but all superadmins to be informed on any changes (add/modify/publish/unpublish).

Remember, that Admin user settings have higher priority then Regular user settings. This means, that is a group of users is set to recieve mails in both these logical groups, the it will recieve mail only as Admin users.

 Section of settings Notify on actions performed by users is worth of additions description.

It is useful i.e. if you want to be informed on changes done by Managers only as you don't trust them very much. But you trust other user groups so you don't need to be inform when they make changes.

You may also add emails to recieve or to never recieve notifications (even if this email is a superamin's email). But I believe it's a useless feature as you can exclude/include users by userid.

All other options seem to me to be self explained, but my opinion is not objective (-: Post requests for additional descriptions here in comments.

5. Tips

Let imagine that you have 10 categories and need to have different notification rules for each category. Core plugin allows to have 2 separate groups (see above). So you may install clone plugins at the plugin settings page (In earlier versions the clones had to be downloaded from here: http://gruz.org.ua/images/stories/files/notifyarticlesubmit/clones/) and have as many separate rules as you want by making different settings in each clone. The logic is very similar to have multiple instances of the same module, but Joomla doesn't allow to copy plugins like modules.

6. Possible problems

The extensions is rather complicated and it's very hard for me (one person) to check all possible combinations of settings. So there can be some "logical forks. If you meet some problems with understanding the settings or believe something works not as expected, please post comments to inform me. Describe your problem as widely as possible.

7. Language translations

The translations may be added or updated with the flow of time. You can download the latest version here (no registration is needed) : https://webtranslateit.com/en/projects/2680-NotifyArticleSubmit/files

7.1. Currenty available languages

The latest released version contains such language translations:

Translations may be updated by users and you can see between relese progress at this chart:

Powered by

Legend:

• translated and profreeded lines
• translated and unprofreeded lines (if you speak a language with such status - please, help with proofread)

So the orange line (despite of 0% which can confuse) shows how many lines are translated, but are not proofreeded by someone who speaks the language. And green line and percents show how many lines are translated and proofreeded.

7.2. Fix/Add translation

To help with translation, please, register at http://webtranslateit.com/ and help with the translation of the extension: https://webtranslateit.com/en/projects/2680-NotifyArticleSubmit/locales/en-GB..en-GB/strings?status=all

7.3. Translate at your website

Master translation files are placed at your web-site in folder: administrator/language/en-GB/

I.e. your locale (language) has code fr-FR. You have to copy files

• administrator/language/en-GB/en-GB.plg_content_notifyarticlesubmit.ini
• administrator/language/en-GB/en-GB.plg_content_notifyarticlesubmit.sys.ini

to

• administrator/language/fr-FR/fr-FR.plg_content_notifyarticlesubmit.ini
• administrator/language/fr-FR/fr-FR.plg_content_notifyarticlesubmit.sys.ini

Next you need to translate the new files.

8. Joomla 1.5 limitation

NotifyArticleSubmit doesn't send emails when (un)publishing articles from article list(not when editing article).  Alas, Joomla 1.5 doesn't have system events, which are fired in this case.

9. Joomla 1.5 and Joomfish

NotifyArticleSubmit sends notification emails while editing different language articles from fronted. But it doesn't send emails when editing translations from Joomfish backend. Alas Joomfish doesn't fire Joomla content events when editing translations from backend, so NotifyArticleSubmit cannot determine when an article was edited in such a way. So if you badly need to have notifications with Joomfish you must edit translations only from frontend. Alas...

NotifyArticleSubmit may have different settings for different languages. You can translate the plugin settings like you can translate any module settings using Joomfish.

I.e. you may want to set Publishers not to be informed when changes are made in a non-main language. So you may choose settings per language.

But! Joomfish doesn't allow to translate plugins in a good way. So to translate Plugin settings visit Joomfish translation section:

And edit the settings, which look like a set of lines:

Alas there is not way to present the settings in a better way while translating via JoomFish. 

10. What it does not do

• Currently it doesn't handle other actions except Publish and Unpublish. This means that Archiving and Trashing articles are not handled by the plugin. But is it really needed?
• Users cannot subscribe/unsubscribe themselves

11. How can I help?

• donate (please! :-)
• report bugs with detailed info (optionally provide akeebabacked copy of the web-site so I can test at my localhost)
• give nicely described ideas
• help with translations

• suggest better settings organization

12. Thanks

• The extensions would not exsists withour perfect NoNumber extensions http://www.nonumber.nl/

• The plugin was originally developed by IWT and Vijay Wadnere. The base code of the plugin is taken from here: http://forum.joomla.org

13. Support

Often people report that the plugin does not work. However, after my intervention it become clear, that users incorrectly configured plugin. This requires my time and attention. So first check carefully  the plugin configuration, and if you see that everything is correct, but the plugin does not work, only then ask for support.

If I find out after my intervention, that the problem was in your plug, then such a support cost $ 10. I think it is fairly.

14. Want a new feature?

You may place a feature request here in the comments. I'll add this to my TODO list(if it's acceptable). Earlier or later it will be implemented. I do my best, often update the extension, but I have limited time(time=money) to work on everything.

If you need a quick feature implementation, please donate. Recommended for reading.

15. Feature Requests/TODO

• Allow to select groups to show the notification switch in the articles to. I.e. SuperAdmins can temporary disable article notifications, but Publisher cannot.

• Custom mailbody

• Create correct mails for reporting non-articles creation (check $context variable)

• Find a way to notify only on Save, but not on Apply (optionally). Maybe catch task with a system plugin...

• Try to handle Publish/Unpublish events from article list in J15. Possibly need a system plugin which can determain (un)publish events and then fire NotifyArticleSubmit.

• It would be cool if there was some sort of feature to allow members to subscribe (as an option for the user) to changes for content (via email). There was an extension for joomla 1.5 that could do this which was called JomWiki. Here is the file in case you want it:
  www.azrul.com/.../com_wiki.zip

  Perhaps pieces of it could be copied to make this feature for NotifyArticleSu bmit? This would make it so notifications would only go to those who want it.

16. Changelog

2.1.1

• Added: Allow to temporary disable notification during editing an article.

• Allow to chose wether to send notification to users, which have no permissions to view an article

2.0.13

• Automatic updates for Joomla 2.5 added

• Fixe a critical arror when handling non-public access categories

• Other small fixes

2.0.10

• Fixed several bugs
• Added several languages
• Added opportunity to disable the plugin for non com_content.articles. Before it was sending notification on creating categories, web-links, maybe something else.

2.0.3

• Added clone feature
• Now Itmeid is added to the article link
• Fixed wrong permissions message instead of view link
• No nnframwork plugin is needed anymore, reduced install package file
• Fixed some smaller several bugs

2.0.2

• Fixed some bugs with loading language files

2.0.1

• Addes some languages translations, updated existing ones

2.0.0

• too much to describe in comparison with 1.0.6.2

1.0.6.2

• Small language fix

1.0.6.1

• added Dutch translation (www.navalia.nl)

1.0.6

• Fixed deprecated warning
• Fixed russian translation bug