How to Allow Users to Subscribe to Authors in WordPress

Have you ever wanted to allow users to subscribe to specific authors in WordPress? If you run a multi-author WordPress site, then your users may want to subscribe to their favorite author. In this article, we will show you how to allow users to subscribe to individual authors in WordPress.

Why Add Subscribe to Authors in WordPress?

Most large multi-author blogs like Huffington Post allow users to follow their favorite authors. You can offer this feature in your multi-author WordPress site as well.

WordPress generates RSS feeds for all authors, categories, tags, custom post types, and comments on your site. However, your users can’t see these feeds link without knowing where to look.

As a site owner, you just need to add links and subscription options so that users can subscribe to authors.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to allow users to easily subscribe to authors in WordPress.

Adding Subscribe to Authors Feature in WordPress

All the authors on your WordPress site have an RSS feed of their own. This RSS feed is located at a URL like this:

http://www.example.com/author/tom/feed/

Don’t forget to replace ‘tom’ with an existing author’s name on your site.

Many WordPress themes come with a section that displays author’s biographical information at the end of the article. You can add this HTML code in an author’s bio section to display a link to their RSS feed.

<a href="http://www.example.com/author/tom/feed">Subcribe Tom's Posts</a>

You can also automatically generate the link and use a shortcode to manually insert it into posts.

First you need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

// Function to generate author's RSS feed link

function wpb_author_feed() {

$authorfeed =  get_author_feed_link( get_the_author_id(), ''); 

$authorfeedlink = '<a href='. $authorfeed . '>Subscribe to get more posts from ' . get_the_author_meta( 'display_name') .''  ;

return $authorfeedlink;

} 
// Create a shortcode to display the link
add_shortcode('authorfeed', 'wpb_author_feed');

// Enable shortcode execution in WordPress text widgets
add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

You can now just use the shortcode [authorfeed] in your posts, and it will automatically generate a link to the post author’s RSS feed. Feel free to customize the text you want to display for the link.

Add a Subscribe to Author Link in the Sidebar

We will be using the shortcode method we showed above to display a subscribe to author link in the sidebar of your WordPress blog. Simply go to Appearance » Widgets page and add a text widget to your sidebar.

You will need to add [authorfeed] shortcode in the text area of the widget. After that, don’t forget to click on the save button to store widget settings.

You can now visit your website to see the sidebar in action.

The problem with this method is that it will display the widget on every page including the homepage, category, and tag archives, etc.

You need to install and activate the Display Widgets plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Widgets page and edit the author’s feed widget you added earlier.

You will notice new options to control widget display on different pages of your site. Now you need to select ‘Show on checked pages’, and then check the single post option.

Don’t forget to click on the save button to store your widget settings.

That’s all you can now visit your website to see your author subscription link in action. You can use a little CSS to create a button, or add an image icon as the subscription.

We hope this article helped you learn how to allow users to subscribe to authors in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to fix most common RSS feed errors in WordPress.

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How to Email Authors When Their Articles are Published in WordPress

If you run a multi-author blog, then notifying the authors when their blog post is published can help them promote the post and participate in the discussion. Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to email authors when their articles are published. In this article, we will show you how to email authors when their posts are published in WordPress.

Method 1: Send Post Notifications to Authors using Edit Flow

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Edit Flow plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Edit Flow works out of the box for email notifications. As soon as you activate the plugin, it will start sending email notifications to authors when their posts are published.

However, it does not send those email notifications to site administrator. You can go to Edit Flow » Notifications page and select enable for ‘Always notify blog admin’ option.

Edit Flow is a powerful plugin, and it can do a lot more than just sending email notifications. For a full overview of what you can do with it, see our guide on how to improve your editorial workflow in WordPress with Edit Flow.

Method 2: Email Authors using Better Notifications for WordPress

This method is for users who just want to send email notifications to authors without any other editorial features of Edit Flow.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Notifcations » Add New page to create your author email notification.

First you need to a enter a title for this notification, for e.g. ‘Post Published Notification for Authors’.

In the ‘Notification for’ field, you need to select ‘New post published’.

Under Additional Email Fields option, check the box next to ‘Send this notification to the Author only’.

Now you need to write a subject line and email body. Better WordPress Notifications comes with a handful of shortcodes that you can use in your email subject and body.

In the email subject field you should enter:

Post Published: [post_title]

For message body, you can use this template:

Hello [user_nicename],

We just published your post “[post_title]”.

You can view it here: [permalink]

Thanks,

Finally, you need to click on the save button to store your new notification.

The plugin will now send a notification email to authors when their posts are published in WordPress.

For more detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add better custom notifications in WordPress.

Method 3: Manually Send Email to Authors When Their Articles are Published

This method is for users who are comfortable adding code snippets in WordPress.

You need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function notifyauthor($post_id) {

$post = get_post($post_id);
$author = get_userdata($post->post_author);
$subject = "Post Published: ".$post->post_title."";

$message = "
      Hi ".$author->display_name.",
      
      Your post, \"".$post->post_title."\" has just been published.
      
      View post: ".get_permalink( $post_id )."
      
      Thanks"
      ;
      
   wp_mail($author->user_email, $subject, $message);
}
add_action('publish_post', 'notifyauthor');

This code runs when a new post is published in WordPress. It sends an email notification to the author using the subject and message defined in the code. Feel free to change the subject and message fields to meet your needs.

Troubleshooting Tip:

If your authors complain about not receiving email notifications, then check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

We hope this article helped you email authors when their articles are published in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of 21 plugins to efficiently manage WordPress multi-author blogs.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Email Authors When Their Articles are Published in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.