Why are my followers notified about old posts I change from private to public?
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I made all of my posts on my blog private to do mass-edits on them. Now, as I change them back to public, my followers are getting an email for every single post. I have no idea how to fix this. Please help!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Alice,
If I understand correctly, you originally published all of your blog posts privately. Now, you’re making them all public. Your followers are receiving notifications as you make each post public. Is that correct? If so, that is the intended result when making a post public as it is effectively a new post on your blog that your followers would not have previously received since they were private. There isn’t a way to disable this option so that your followers do not receive an email.
Can you confirm this is the scenario you’re experiencing?
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Hey Jeremy,
No, not quite.
I became aware that even though I correctly attribute images, and link back to the artists’ websites, I should still obtain permission to post them — i.e., my use of the images didn’t constitute fair use.
My solution for this was to make my posts private while I worked through them to remove the images (to make them text-only) until I could email the artists for permission. They were originally published as public, and were up for months or years before I made them private.
Unfortunately, every time I made a post public again, my subscribers got an email, as if it were a new post.
My makeshift solution has been to make the entire blog private, then to individually make posts public, and then when I’m done to make the blog public again.
However, I think that if possible, it would be great if WordPress could distinguish between posts that are public for the first time, and posts that are just private temporarily.
Cheers,
A. -
Hey Alice,
I’m still trying to reproduce this on my side. So I can reproduce this as close as possible, did you make any adjustments to the text when you were changing the posts from private back to public or were you just removing/adding images?
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Jeremy,
I was just removing images. In some cases, I wasn’t doing any editing at all, just making posts public again (if I found out that the images were OK under fair use).
A.
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Jeremy,
I thought of something else: I hired someone to do this work for me, and she’s doing it from her account. That shouldn’t change the authorship of the posts, though, should it?
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Hey Alice,
No, that shouldn’t change the author of the post. I ran a few tests, and I was unable to recreate this. Here are the steps I used:
- I created a new post with an image. The post was published as public. I received an email notification.
- I went back in as the original creator and switched the post to private.
- I then logged in under another user on the blog and switched the post back to public. I did not receive an email notification when I switched the post to public.
I also tried making a slight change (either removing the image or adding some text) before step three with no success in reproducing. Does that match the steps you used?
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Hey Jeremy,
Yep, that matches the steps. No idea what went wrong. Do you need any more info from me to recreate it?
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Hey Alice,
I’m not entirely sure either. When I follow those steps, I’m not receiving additional email notifications. I’m going to continue to investigate. Are you still in the process of converting posts from private to public? I just signed up to follow your blog. If you’re just changing posts from private to public, I should not get any notifications when you do so.
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Jeremy,
I don’t think I’ll need to convert any more…I’m sorry. At least if someone else has a similar problem they’ll be able to find this thread! Thanks for all your help.
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Hey Alice,
Not a problem! If you experience this issue again for one reason or another, please let me know.
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