PublishPress 1.10 Has Improved Calendar Subscriptions and Notifications

Version 1.10 of PublishPress is available today.

This release improves two features – calendar subscriptions and notifications for multiple users. It also fixes some issues that had been bugging users.

Let's give you a quick overview of what's new in this week's PublishPress release.

#1. Calendar Subscriptions

1.10 has improvements to the iCal and Google Calendar integration in PublishPress.

In the top-right corner of your calendar that says “Click here to Subscribe in iCal or Google Calendar”. This link will export the details of the content from your PublishPress calendar.

Click the link above your calendar and you’ll see this pop-up. You can choose how far into the past (Start date) and how far into the future (End date) your calendar goes. You can either download the .ics file or you can copy the URL for your calendar.

Once you have the .ics file or the URL, you can import your content schedule into your favorite calendar software.

This post has even more details on the calendar improvements.

Here's a video showing how this works:

#2. Notification Workflows

Some PublishPress users reported that the notifications struggled to send correctly if many users were being notified.

To fix this, the default option in PublishPress is now Async Notifications. This means that notifications message – either through email or Slack – won't be sent absolutely instantly. Instead, they'll run a few moments later using WP Cron.

WP Cron is the system used by WordPress to do things that needs doing several times each day:

  • Check for posts that are scheduled to be published.
  • Look for plugin and theme updates.

This WP Cron tutorial is old but still a good introduction.

The upside to this move is that notifications will be more reliable. The only downside to this move is the slighty delay. WP-Cron function runs every time someone visits the WordPress powered website. So, if you have a very quiet site, but don't want to wait, Async Notifications can be disabled from the “Settings” screen in PublishPress.

To take advantage of this improvement, please also update the Slack add-on if you use it.

Bug Fixes in 1.10.0

  • Fixed an issue where posts with “Pending” status were hidden.
  • Fixed an issue where custom post types where not recognized by some modules.
  • Fixed the publishing date for unpublished posts. Now it is no longer changed when you save a post.

All the changelogs for PublishPress and the add-ons are now easier to find.

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