How to Send Reminders to WordPress Authors Before the Publishing Date
Are you forgetful?
I certainly am. I need reminders and prompts to help keep me organized.
So, for everyone who need some extra organization, we built the Reminders feature in PublishPress Pro.
Reminders can automatically send notifications before you publish content. Here are some examples of how you can use Reminders:
- 4 weeks before publishing date: Send emails to authors, explaining your editorial process, giving them deadlines and instructions.
- 2 weeks before publishing date: Send a reminder to editors, asking them to proof-read the post for publication.
- 2 days before publishing date: Send an email to your Editor-in-Chief, asking them to approve the post as ready for publication.
Let's see an example of how to use Reminders. We'll create an email that will go out 4 weeks before posts are published. The email will explain our site's editorial process.
Step #1. Creating the Reminder
- Download and install PublishPress Pro.
- In your site, go to “PublishPress” then “Notifications”.
- Click “Add New”.
- In the Title field, enter “What you need to know before writing”.
- Under “When to notify”, look for the “Before the content is published” option.
- Now you can choose when the notification will be sent. In this example, we'll set the “Amount” to “4” and the “Unit of timer” to “Weeks”.
- In the “For which content?” setting, you can choose a particular Post type or Category.
- In the “Who to notify?” setting, I'd recommend send this email to the “Authors of the content”.
- In the “What to say?” area, you can create your own notification. This post shows how to use dynamic tags in your notifications.
- Click “Publish” to activate the notification.
Step #2. Creating the Post
In this part of the process, you create the content that will trigger the notification.
- When creating the post, click “Edit” in the “Publish immediately” row.
- Choose the date when this post is scheduled for publication. This is the date that will trigger your reminder notifications. In the example below, the reminder emails will be sent 4 weeks before August 2, 2018.
- Don't forget to choose the author for the content. This is the person who will receive the reminder email. On a normal WordPress site, look for the “Author” box at the bottom of the screen.
- Finally save your post in any status you want except for Published. This post does not need to be published for another 4 weeks! If you're wondering what options you have for saving the content, check out this post: what are the default post statuses in WordPress?
You can also remind them after publication: for example, you can prompt them to share the post on social media.