Notify Followers of Project Update

  • amyelize · Member ·

    Hello!

    I have made this site for my photography, and the photo pages are made up of projects in the portfolio section.

    Is there a way to notify my followers when I update a project? I would like them to see when I add new photos to a project.

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

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Is there a way to notify my followers when I update a project?

    There isn’t a way for them to be automatically notified. Visitors to your site would need to subscribe to your Portfolio feed manually using this link:

    https://lilybehindthelens.wordpress.com/portfolio/feed/

    They can add this link to their Reader in Followed Sites > Manage — and paste the URL into the box at the top.

    Let me know if you have any questions!

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Just thinking out loud.

    We could really use a “Subscribe to custom post type” widget or an IFTTT applet “If new WordPress custom post type item, then publish new blog post” so the regular blog feed is populated or some such.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    OK-scratch that second thought. Now that I’ve had a chance to think it through, the duplicate content issue would likely cause an issue. Back to the drawing board.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Digging a little further, I (re)found a Staff reply from last year which suggests using blog posts to indicate there are new items in the Portfolio section.

    If you post the rss feed that @gemmacevans provided in an RSS Shortcode in a monthly/weekly “Portfolio Update” blog post, and only showed post titles and dates, I don’t believe there would be a duplicate content issue, but would be happy for confirmation from Staff. (fingers crossed )

    If you decide later that you want to add new blog posts that aren’t updates to your Portfolio pages, you might want to go back and create a Portfolio category as well.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Good work on finding that post @justjennifer :)

    After reading your reply, I tested adding an RSS shortcode of a portfolio feed to my test site. It worked but only displayed text with links — although this could be changed with some of the customisation options:

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/rss-shortcode/#customizing-your-feed

    The feed URL will display a list of all portfolio projects by default, unless it was customised.

    I don’t believe there would be a duplicate content issue, but would be happy for confirmation from Staff. (fingers crossed )

    There would be duplicate links to the content, but no duplication of the portfolio projects themselves.

    I think @supernovias suggestion (in the post you linked to) of creating a blog post to introduce a new project is the simplest way forward, but you can also experiment with the RSS shortcode if you want to @amyelize.

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/rss-shortcode/

    Thanks for thinking out loud.

  • amyelize · Member ·

    Hi everyone, thank you very much for your help! I will have a go at making some posts and look at the RSS shortcode. Sure I can work something out :)

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    @gemmacevans welcome, but not giving up on the suggestion of a subscribe to custom post type widget. :)

    @amyelize – If you need help with that shortcode, just let us know.

    One thing I don’t know is if it is possible to limit the number of portfolio feed posts in some manner. The above support doc says

    The number of items displayed from the RSS feed will be determined by the feed owner.

    If it were a regular blog feed we’re talking about, that I know how to do; portfolio feed, not so much.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    welcome, but not giving up on the suggestion of a subscribe to custom post type widget. :)

    I will mention this as a feature suggestion!

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Thanks!

    Any thoughts about limiting the number of posts that appear in the RSS shortcode? Will the portfolio (or any onsite) feed also be affected by the regular “Syndication feeds show the most recent X items” feed settings?

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Any thoughts about limiting the number of posts that appear in the RSS shortcode?

    There aren’t any customization options in the RSS shortcode, so the feed would display all of the projects.

    Will the portfolio (or any onsite) feed also be affected by the regular “Syndication feeds show the most recent X items” feed settings?

    No, this setting does not control the amount of recent items on an RSS added via a shortcode. I tested it on my own site and when that number was set to 3, all projects were still displayed in the post.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Thanks for testing and sharing the results @gemmacevans.

    Shame to hear that it’s not possible to limit the number of items in a site RSS feed that is not the direct site feed URL via the Feed Settings. After 15, 30, 80 portfolio projects that RSS shortcode embed would certainly get unwieldy!

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