4.4 Story Digest Emails

Scoop can send headlines and summaries of stories posted to either front page or section since the last scheduled digest email. Daily digests are sent every day, weekly digests are sent on Sunday, and monthly digests are sent on the first of the month.

To configure story digests, set the variable digest_subject to the desired subject line of the email. The content of the digest email is set using the blocks digest_header, digest_footer, and digest_storyformat. If you want the header and footer of your digest email to be the same, you can also use digest_headerfooter. If the blocks for both the separate and combined header and footer exist, the separate header and footer blocks are used.

The subject is sent as-is to the digest recipients. The blocks used to format the content of the digest contain special keys documented in the block descriptions which are used to place the relevant information. HTML and regular block references should not be used in these blocks as the HTML in the stories is removed and the email sent as plain text.

Once the digests are configured as you want them, set the variable enable_story_digests to 1, and in the Cron Admin Tool (A.14) activate the digest cron item. It should run no more than once per day, as the code does not check if it has already run that day, it simply sends the last day's (or week's, or month's) worth of stories.

When enable_story_digests is turned on, users are given a control which allows them to choose at what frequency they wish to receive story digests, if at all.


janra
2004-03-26