Wp-calypso: Provide Option to Publish Posts Without Notifying Email Subscribers

[kristenzuck]

This was added to our HappOps Product Support Github repo ( 20-GH-happops ) as an item that is low priority, but likely a quick win. We are often asked by customers for the ability to publish a new post on a blog without notifying their subscribers.

To name a few situations where this has come up - some customers have their own mailing tool they use to notify subscribers, some customers post frequently and get complaints about too many emails, some want to backdate posts and not notify subscribers, and some customers have private posts they would like to make public without notifying anyone.

Historically this has only been surfaced to my knowledge on WPCOM Ideas in several different threads:

• Two reports here: pKdGS-Wi-p2
• 17 reports here: pKdGS-78-p2
• 7 reports here: pKdGS-1IG-p2
• 5 reports here: pKdGS-1z4-p2

The above is definitely not an inclusive list of all instances where this has been requested, as not all are noted here in WPCOM Ideas.

[davemart-in]

This likely will affect a number of various flows. We'll need to do some extended testing to ensure that we aren't breaking anything.

[pento]

On researching this, I discovered that there's already post meta check to help with this. If _jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs is set to true on the post, the post won't be emailed to subscribers.

There used to be an option in the classic editor to do this, but it hasn't been ported to the block editor (Automattic/jetpack#10876). There was a PR started a while back for this (Automattic/jetpack#14021), but it hasn't been touched in a while.

It seems like that's a good place to start on providing this option.

[davemart-in]

That's awesome. Thanks for doing that research @pento!

[jordesign]

Just noting anecdotally that we'll regularly (every month or two) see a workaround shared in Slack for this when users are asking for this option.

• Make Site Private
• Publish Post
• Make site public again

Recent example (I haven't dug further yet).
p1597766660424800-slack-C03TY6J1A

[jordesign]

Another instance of a similar conversation here:
p1598784591069200-slack-C03TY6J1A

[jordesign]

On further testing - the other option is to turn _off_ the Subscriptions module in Jetpack before you publish the post. This would stop notification emails being sent

[tehjaymo]

I just came across this conversation whilst searching for an answer to the same problem. Would be a quality of life upgrade for many I think.