How to Set Up Email Digests in BuddyNext

How to set up email digests in BuddyNext, step by step. A digest is one email that rounds up a member's unread notifications once a day or once a week. Each member sets a notification type to Daily or Weekly under Settings, then Notifications, and can stop every digest with the Email digests row. The site owner keeps digests on or turns them off for the whole site under BuddyNext, then Notifications, then Notifications, then Digest emails, rewrites the Daily digest and Weekly digest emails under Email Templates, and confirms a digest was sent in the Email Log.

Transcript

In this tutorial you will set up email digests in BuddyNext. A digest is one email that rounds up a member's unread notifications, once a day or once a week. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin, and a site that can send email. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Choose Daily or Weekly. Stop every digest. Switch digests on for the site. Edit the digest email. Then check a digest went out. Step one. Choose Daily or Weekly. Digests are chosen by each member. Sign in as a member, open Settings, then Notifications, and scroll to Activity types. Most types have four Email choices. Immediate sends an email at once. Daily and Weekly hold it for the next digest. Here, Comments on your posts is set to Daily. Each comment still shows on the bell at once. Only the email waits. Step two. Stop every digest. In the group Growth and digests is a row named Email digests, with two choices, On and Off. Set it to Off, and you get no digest emails at all. Above it, Daily digest and Weekly digest are On and Off too. Each one stops only that digest. A digest only holds what you have not read. If nothing is unread, no email goes out. And you get one daily digest a day at most, and one weekly digest a week. Step three. Switch digests on for the site. In your WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, then Notifications. In the Email digest box is one list, Digest emails. It starts on Enabled, and each member picks daily or weekly for themselves. The other choice, Disabled, stops every digest for the whole site. The note under it says the same. Each member chooses daily or weekly in their own notification preferences. Step four. Edit the digest email. Open Email Templates. In the Digests group are two emails, Daily digest and Weekly digest. This is Daily digest. You can rewrite its Subject line and Body like any other email. Keep the notification list token. That is where the round-up goes. Click Preview to see it in your own branding. The switch at the top turns this digest off for everyone. Step five. Check a digest went out. Open Email Log, and choose Daily digest in the list beside the search box. Each digest is one row. It names the member, the day the digest covers, and whether it was sent. Digests are built by a scheduled task, not by a visit. On a quiet site, set up a real server cron so they leave on time. That is all five. Daily or Weekly chosen, every digest stopped with one row, digests switched on for the site, the digest email edited, and a sent digest found in the log. Your members can now hear about everything in one email, when it suits them. Next in this series: Report a post or a member.