Private blog: My viewers aren't getting email updates when I post

  • sarahbela · Member ·

    I have a private blog and I want the people who I have invited to receive an update by email each time that I make a new post. As I understand it, the difference between a viewer (which I invited people to be) and a follower is simply that the former is for private sites. I recently made a post but the people who are my viewers don’t seem to have received the email update. If I have to separately email everyone each time I post that seems silly. Is there something I need to switch on/off? When I look under “all users” only my own email shows up – but then in another section I found that 44 people are “users” of my site, with about 20 more waiting to join. Help please!

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • theradiocrytic · Member ·

    No, a foower is someone who subscribes to your site via email or RSS. That being said, I do not know if there is any way to have viewers who have been invited to and have accepted the invitation to your private blog be followers automatically.

  • lizthefair · Staff ·

    is the other section to which you are referring on the Settings>Reading page? If so, it could be that the list of people on that page are the people you invited, but no one has clicked the “accept invitation” button in the initial e-mail from WordPress yet, so they aren’t getting updates. If you see the people you invited on the Settings>Reading page and the Users>Invite New page, but not the Users>All Users page that might be in play.

    More information: http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/

  • sarahbela · Member ·

    Thanks to you both for your help with this. I am baffled. About half of the people I have invited show up as “Accepted” under the role of viewer in the section Users>Invite New, and the others show up as “Waiting”. Some of the people who are listed as “Accepted” then show up in Settings>Reading as “Users allowed to access the site/Current site users”. But I remain the only name in Users>All Users.

    I simply want everyone who has reading access to my site to get an update when I make a post. Is there no simple way to ensure that?

  • lizthefair · Staff ·

    If your followers accepted your invite before you published the post in question, you published a post rather than a page (http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/) and you are sure the e-mail notification didn’t get routed to spam, then it seems like you’ve done your part.

    I’ll tag this thread for Staff assistance and get some fresh eyes on the question.

  • sarahbela · Member ·

    Thank you! Yes – most of them signed up in February. I have a few pages, but I recently put up a post (not a new page) and they didn’t seem to get what followers (and I thought viewers) were supposed to get: “receive updates each time you publish a new post.” I will double check with people – but one confirmed that she checked spam and there was no sight. Thanks so much!

  • rachelmcr · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    When you add someone as a Viewer to your private site, that gives them access to view the site. However, if they want to receive email updates every time you post, they will need to sign up for those separately (by becoming followers of the site). We have details about how they can follow your blog here: Following Blogs

    You can also add a Follow Blog Widget to your site to make it easy for your site’s Viewers to sign up to get updates when you post.

    If someone has already signed up to follow your blog and they still aren’t getting updates, please let me know their email address or username and I can look into that for you. :)

  • sarahbela · Member ·

    Thanks so much for your help with this. Some feedback for wordpress: it might be helpful to make this distinction more clear online. In the summary for “User Roles” they are written as Viewer/Follower, and under follower it says: “Viewers are the equivalent of Followers” – but this distinction (that as a viewer you DON’T get updates by email of new postings) is really important! I have had to re-email everyone that I originally invited.

    Thanks again for your help!

  • rachelmcr · Staff ·

    Thanks for that feedback! I updated our User Roles support page to try to clarify that distinction between Followers and Viewers.

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