Stop Email Notifications when changing url of old post

Hi Fotis,
As I noted with my recent experience, I have Subscriptions turned on and it wasn’t sending notifications anymore after I update permalink. Why is that? The reason why it was left turned on is because I was ok for notifications to be sent.

Also, it’s not because of some caching issue like before when I was turning it on and off. I have it on for months now and have posted new blog posts that did send notifications to subscribers.

Hm, we might be misunderstanding you here.

Do you _want_ an email to be sent to subscribers when you update the permalink? If so, Jetpack has never been able to do that, we only send emails when posts are freshly published.

Hi James,
The initial reason for this thread is because when I updated the permalink of an old post with Subscriptions turned ON before, it sent notifications when I didn’t want it to. So I was told that the solution was to turn OFF Subscriptions when updating permalinks of old post.

So now, I have Subscriptions turned ON and updated permalinks of old posts. At this point, I am fine for notifications to be sent to Subscribers. However, it did not send notifications after updating.

Honestly, I am fine with it not sending notifications. It is preferred. I really just want to know the expected behaviour since it’s been inconsistent from what I just explained above.

I have old posts where I don’t want notifications being sent on permalink update, and some where I’m indifferent. I don’t really want to turn OFF Subscriptions if possible because it would remove the Subscribe widget I have on the sidebar BUT I had to before because it was firing notifications for old post permalink changes I didn’t want notifications for.

Hope this makes sense.

when I updated the permalink of an old post with Subscriptions turned ON before, it sent notifications when I didn’t want it to.

That could be because the post was never published while Jetpack was active before.

We send subscription notifications for posts exactly once, never more. If a post has never been published under Jetpack before, that means we have no record of it, so when it’s edited, that’s the one time, and we send an email.

So I was told that the solution was to turn OFF Subscriptions when updating permalinks of old post.

Yep, that’s the right thing to do when editing any posts that existed prior to Jetpack.

So now, I have Subscriptions turned ON and updated permalinks of old posts. At this point, I am fine for notifications to be sent to Subscribers. However, it did not send notifications after updating.

That would mean that we already sent a subscription email for the post, likely when it was originally published, or the last time it was edited.

Keep in mind again, we only ever send one email per post.

I really just want to know the expected behaviour since it’s been inconsistent from what I just explained above.

We will always only ever send one email per post.

If it’s a newly published post, the email that goes out will be its one email. There will be no emails sent for edits.

If the post was published prior to Jetpack, and you edit it, that will be its one email. There will be no further emails sent for it.

Thanks for the explanation on this. Is there a way for me to know which post have had notifications sent before vs not? This will help me strategize how I update the permalinks.

Is there a way for me to know which post have had notifications sent before vs not?

It’s probably safe to assume that any post that existed on your site already when you first connected Jetpack, and any post published while the subscriptions module was deactivated, would not have had notifications sent out. But we don’t show anywhere whether or not notifications were sent out for a particular post, and I don’t even know of any tool where I can check that internally, so that’s the most I’m able to help.

If you need to change the permalinks on a large number of posts, I recommend you temporarily disable the subscriptions module, make your changes, and then re-enable it once you’re done, and before you publish the next new post.

Thanks for the clarification. Can you confirm that if I re-publish (not update) an existing post with a new date, will it send a notification again or not?

By re-publish, do you mean editing the post, setting it to draft, changing the date, and publishing again?

If so, notifications won’t be sent for a post if it were sent in the past, but if no notification has been sent for the post in the past, that will send out a new notification.

The only way to ensure no notifications are sent is to temporarily disable the subscriptions module as I explained above.