It’s 2am, Where Are Your Posts?
Have you ever read one of your old posts and thought something was different? Maybe a few words were changed, the formatting was different, or an entire paragraph was missing. You poured your heart and soul into the post and didn’t know someone changed it after you hit publish. If this sounds familiar, you probably have a multi-author blog. 
Today we’re launching a feature called Email Post Changes to help blogs with multiple authors collaborate better on the same posts and pages. If you turn it on, we’ll instantly notify you by email whenever a change is made to a post on your site. You’ll recognize the format of the email is the same as post revisions, making it easy to see exactly what has changed.
More than 460,000 WordPress.com sites have multiple authors, with one site having 641 users, so we think this will be a great feature for a lot of you. We’ve been using the email notifications at Automattic for a while and hope it will be as useful for you as it has been for us. If you have an interesting usage, let us know in the comments.
For more details and configuration help, head over to the Email Post Changes support document.
The Email Post Changes plugin has been updated for self-hosted WordPress.org users.
September 11th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Useful for me as my friend and I are constantly editing stuff on epic9.wordpress.com. Truly useful!
September 11th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Lovely feature .. !
I’m impressed evertime you develop something new ^^
September 11th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for the info, Although I don’t have anybody to share my blog with, but would love to try it out sometime!
September 11th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I love this! I hope I’ll get a team going for my blog real soon.
September 11th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Nice new feature this will come in handy.
September 11th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Even though my blog doesn’t have multi-authors, it’s great to know about this, maybe I’ll try the multi-author thing someday, if I trust someone a lot.
September 11th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Perfect! Now I can start a team blog… without having to worry about issues regarding their revisions.
September 11th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Sounds like a good improvement. Some questions:
I assume that other team members will get automatic notification only after person #1 has made all the draft changes and then SAVES those changes? Otherwise it’s multiple email alerts for incremental changes each time a person hits SAVE button, then goes back into it to make the next change.
I’m often Save changes when I work on a post because I need to preview each stage, before moving onto next section of post, etc.
September 12th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
If the Drafts option is turned on, every time you click the Save button, an email will be sent with the changes.
September 11th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Just in time. I´m thiking to call friends to blog with me
September 11th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Another useful feature. Well done wordpress.
September 11th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I guess the problems this new feature addresses show the up side to blogging on your own
September 12th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Great new feature. Thanks, wordpress!
September 12th, 2010 at 1:52 am
excellent idea for those who have writers submitting articles for the editors to preview and change where nessecsary. It can show the writers where changes were made and why, as well as how the changes have enhanced their work.
Only other addition to the UI would be to add ‘Pending” access from the drop-down menue that allows access to the Drafts, New post etc in the upper right menue, as well as access from other areas in the side menue area. As it is now, the Pendings is several clicks away, rather than one click from the menues.
That would be a great help guys/gals. As it’s an area editors have to access a great deal when placing the items in there prior to publication so that they are separate from those in ‘Drafts’ (ie – works in progress)
September 12th, 2010 at 2:22 am
Wow – cool! I don’t have any collaborators, but this is SUCH a cool feature!!
September 12th, 2010 at 2:24 am
Great for those who need this feature. Six hundred forty one users is a lot!
September 12th, 2010 at 3:30 am
I tested this with someone else several thousand kms. away.
It would be even better if the blogger administrator had the choice to check off only certain articles that team collaborators needed email alerts on changes to a post or page.
September 12th, 2010 at 6:06 am
One site has 641 users? Wow! I can certainly see a website such as that needing a feature like this to keep the quality high and errors minimal.
September 12th, 2010 at 6:10 am
That’s awesome! Now I don’t have to worry about post changes anymore! My blog has jus one author (me), but it’ll help me know if anyone or anything edits my blog. I once had a spambot edit my blog (I have no idea how it got a hold of my password, but it did), but now I’ll know if any changes are made before anyone notices them.
September 12th, 2010 at 6:24 am
I’ll invite some people to my blog to make use of it – anyone interested?
September 12th, 2010 at 7:36 am
I have a Q?
If a site has multiple authors, and you enable each authors email contact details, do they get every alteration from any post, or only the alteration to THEIR post, otherwise you’d have numerious authors getting emails about other authors posts that have nothing to do with them.
So am I correct in assuming that the alteration to a specific post only notifies the author of said post, rather than every author that has been selected in the ‘Notify’ section – would that be correct??
Thanks . . . .
September 12th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Every user or email address set in the Settings will get notified for every change, even if the post is not their own.
September 12th, 2010 at 7:41 am
I’m far too anal to allow anyone to post on my blog (lol)… but still wanted to let you know how much I appreciate how much attention and time is put into improving the options available to WordPress.com users. You folks are some of my favorite people in the whole fraccing world!
September 12th, 2010 at 8:50 am
although i dont have a multiuser blog, that is very usefull. thumps up
September 12th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Looks cool. I’ll be surely going to use it on our teamblog.. as soon as we get one set up
September 12th, 2010 at 11:08 am
A perfect update….
Now i can start a multi-author blog without much tension.Now,I’ll try to make a 3 to 5/6 people team after some months. Keep it up, as you’ll bring new every time
September 12th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
This is a nice feature that is available elsewhere, so I’m glad to see it at WordPress, too.
September 12th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
excellent!!! i don’t know if this applies to me [im sure it will take long enough for me to find out] but it sounds like a good idea for those who do need it. Peace of mind all the way around on this site huh!!!
September 12th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
This is very nice, thank you! So much more efficient than emailing changes back and forth between writers. Sweet!
September 12th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
So what happened to the “It’s 3am, Where Are Your Posts?” post, which you guys posted yesterday?
September 12th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
The date was wrong when it was originally published.
September 12th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
I might be adding people on my site as well, that would be a useful feature.
September 12th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Bravo, I am on two sites with multiple authors. I can only imagine how helpful, this could be.
September 12th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
It’s something useful to have, but I currently I don’t have any intention to share posting with others.
September 12th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I might add people to my site! This could help a lot!
September 13th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Thanks! I look forward to giving it a try.
September 13th, 2010 at 7:17 am
Thanks!! Another cool feature. What are you guys thinking of next??? Keep ‘em coming
September 13th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Great! I don’t actually have a multi-user blog. But I’d like to set one up.
September 14th, 2010 at 5:32 am
This will really help for small to medium organisation who are leveraging the WordPress to promote their objectives, thoughts and products.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Thanks, it will help me a lot.
September 14th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Yea, this will be a big help.
September 15th, 2010 at 12:28 am
This will be great if my co-blogger ever jumps in and actually contributes!
September 15th, 2010 at 5:59 am
This will be a great aid. Another useful feature. Thanx WordPress.
September 15th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Wow! I’m the sole author of my current blog, but if I ever create a multi-user blog, this feature will be extremely helpful.
You guys never cease to amaze me. Thanks WordPress!
September 16th, 2010 at 1:13 am
That is a great feature. I could add another person to write on my blog without worries.
September 16th, 2010 at 3:45 am
Short and right to the point. Great info.
September 16th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for the good stuff. This is really useful for me…
September 16th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Wow! Thanks! I mean, it’s not like I don’t trust my trusty co-authors, but still. It’s a good precaution.
On another note, isn’t there some way to make your co-authors not be able to edit your posts though?
~Bookworm4evr
September 21st, 2010 at 7:04 pm
You can assign Author role to your co-author, instead of Editor or Administrator role. Uses with Author role can only edit, publish and delete their posts.
September 17th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Great! I have been waiting for this feature, can wait to use it
September 18th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
This will be a great help for my school’s chapter of Phi Theta Kappa at alphapialpha.wordpress.com. Thanks, guys!
September 19th, 2010 at 7:07 am
nice feature…Keep up the good work
September 19th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
This is awesome I would definitely use this feature as my friend and I might work on some posts together
September 20th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
This is a great feature! My blog hasn’t exactly started off yet, but if other people post or make changes to my post, I would most definitely want to be informed.
Thanks so much!
September 20th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Good feature. Thanks!
September 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am
No way. This is a one man show.
September 21st, 2010 at 9:28 am
Good stuff. A friend and I have been planning to start a blog together and this could be really helpful for both of us. THanks!
September 22nd, 2010 at 12:24 am
Thanks for this good stuff, I have not use multiple authors on my blog. Will come to that when I’m ready
September 22nd, 2010 at 4:09 am
It’s great feature I’ve been wondering so far if it was available, as I’m planning to have my blog pals as co-author. It could be helpful for us.
September 22nd, 2010 at 9:08 am
Still trying to get familiar with WP, and loving it every moment!
September 23rd, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Wow it ‘d be more beneficial for viewers. Now they can read multi-authors opinions in the same blog and issues.
September 23rd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
With my blog – average 100 persons a day – only one blogger – it’s quite impossible to change the content of my posts … unless is another ME ? Or drunk ME:)
September 23rd, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Awesome dude!
September 24th, 2010 at 9:33 am
I was hoping this blog was raising some sort of philosophical question, but I like the idea of the feature regardless.
September 25th, 2010 at 3:13 am
We only have 3 users on our L3gaci.com blog, just starting out, but it seems like a nifty feature to have!
September 25th, 2010 at 8:44 am
This is great. Opens up a whole new opportunity to expand blogs. Thanks!