Disabling Jetpack subscriptions also disables comment thread subscription

[rariasjr]

I outgrew Jetpack subscriptions and am now using a combo of MailPoet/SendGrid and Bloom to control my lists, newsletter and optins on my site (happy thus far minus the additional costs).

I had to disable jetpack subscriptions to enable my own optin forms and control my newsletters and doing so also disables my commenters ability to subscribe to comment threads and they no longer get email alerts when someone replies to their comment which subsequently reduces traffic.

I considered moving to another comment engine like Disqus but I don’t want to lose all my existing comments.

Your advise would be appreciated.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/

[Jeremy Herve]

That can indeed be an issue.

Instead of disabling the Subscriptions module altogether, I’d recommend that you leave it on, but delete all email subscribers from your Jetpack Subscriber list if you’ve already exported that list and moved those readers over to MailPoet/SendGrid. You can do so here:
https://wordpress.com/people/email-followers

Unfortunately, if you had a lot of email followers that could take you a while; I’m afraid there is no way to bulk-remove subscribers at the moment.

Once you’ve removed everyone, you’ll need to go to Settings > Discussion in your dashboard, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and disable the Blog subscription option so the only option left there is the comment subscription option.

I hope this helps.

[rariasjr]

Thank You,
I have more than 5,000 subscribers so this might take awhile. Is there a way to delete or replace the file with the subscribers in it? Would this alter the functionality of for those that opt to subscribe to comments?

I did figure out a way to enable a toggle box through a hook in the subscriptions.php file that gives me the option “Don’t send this to subscribers”. What I’m trying to figure out now is if I can enable this toggle by default so I don’t accidentally send posts to my jetpack subscribers.

[Jeremy Herve]

Is there a way to delete or replace the file with the subscribers in it? Would this alter the functionality of for those that opt to subscribe to comments?

Yes, I could remove all followers for you on my end, but that would also remove all existing comment followers, unfortunately.

I’m afraid there is no great solution here, at least until we add bulk-remove options to the subscriber list.

I did figure out a way to enable a toggle box through a hook in the subscriptions.php file that gives me the option “Don’t send this to subscribers”.

A filter is indeed most likely your best option since you have that many followers. However, instead of using that checkbox filter, I’d suggest using a different filter, that allows you to only trigger subscriptions when a post belongs to a specific category. You could use that filter and only trigger subscriptions when a post belongs to a category that doesn’t exist on your site.

I covered these different filters in this post:
https://jetpack.com/2016/02/10/hook-month-control-subscriptions/

I hope this helps.

[rariasjr]

Hey Jeremy, thanks again for all your help.
Getting back to this because I was in a rush and just published a post that accidentally went out to my wordpress subscriber list with is now a bit stale and also includes probably 50% spam accounts.

The toggle box works exactly as I need it to but I just wish it was toggled “on” by default.
Is there any way to enable this? I’m not clear on the other ‘category” method and if this would require upkeep if I add new categories.

Thanks,
-Rob

[Jeremy Herve]

The toggle box works exactly as I need it to but I just wish it was toggled “on” by default.
Is there any way to enable this?

I’m afraid there is no easy way to do that right now.

I’m not clear on the other ‘category” method and if this would require upkeep if I add new categories

That depends. In the post I linked to earlier, I highlighted 2 different filters:

• jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_these_categories doesn’t require any upkeep since you’re only listing the categories you want to exclude.
• jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_all_categories_except would require updates, since it allows you to list the categories for which you want to send updates.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.