Problem

You want to send out a notification when new content is posted to your weblog.

Solution

In the Edit Entry screen of the post you wish to notify subscribers about, click the Notification tab and press Send.

Discussion

Movable Type includes the ability to easily send an email notification to readers to alert them of a new post.

Notifications are never sent automatically when you post a new entry. They are sent from a small form found on the Notifications tab of the Edit Entry screen assuming you have been granted Send Notifications permission.

In the Notification tab, enter the text of the message you would like to send. Using the checkboxes to the left, you can optionally include the excerpt or the entire body of the entry. When ready, click Send. The notification message will be sent with a link to the entry and the message as you have specified. The contents of notification messages are limited to these options. The template cannot be modified from within Movable Type.

MT is not a full-fledged mailing list manager and has its limitations. While background tasks have been introduced in MT, they have yet to make it into this area of the system. The sending of notifications is run as a CGI process, so in order to avoid a browser timeout, MT breaks the notification list up into groups of 20 and sends them using the BCC field to maintain the privacy of subscribers. This grouping function also helps avoid any issues where the mail server might reject a message because the BCC list is too long. Messages are sent from the authors of the entries to themselves.

Many first-time users of the notification features are caught off guard when multiple copies of the notification they just sent arrive in their inbox. Don't be surprised -- this is a sign that the notification was sent correctly.