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subscribe2 is dead. Long live subscribe2!

As most of my regular readers know, I've stopped developing subscribe2, the email notification plugin I first released a year and a half ago. This plugin was very well received, and it's in use on a lot of WordPress blogs. Of the plugins I wrote, only my database backup plugin is more popular -- and that's mostly due to its inclusion with the core WordPress download.

I started subscribe2 as an update to the "subscribe" plugin by seriocomic. His plugin used a flat text file, and required a fair amount of command-line jiggery-pokery to make work. An email notification mechanism was just the thing my mom wanted for her "topic of the month" blog, but I didn't want to be saddled with managing all the details of said mechanism. So I took seriocomic's plugin as a foundation and modified it to use the WordPress database to store all the subscriber data. Thus subscribe2 was born. No, it wasn't a particularly catchy name.

subscribe2 evolved through a series of feature requests from users. A lot of people had a lot of good ideas, and I was frankly surprised by the amount of attention my little plugin received. Bug reports came in alongside feature requests, and I really learned a lot about WordPress and its plugin API while working on subscribe2. Several folks submitted patches, and a few folks really helped me out by rigorously testing beta releases.

Matt at prescriber.org.uk was one such tester. He was instrumental in ferreting out all kinds of niggling problems that I had overlooked. He, too, cut his PHP and WordPress teeth on subscribe2 and quickly grew from tester to feature designer. He fixed code, submitted a few modest improvements, and expressed a strong interest in seeing subscribe2 live.

I am pleased to announce that subscribe2 is now under new management! Matt has been adding useful new features to my adandoned codebase, and he shows no signs of stopping.

If you're a user of subscribe2, please update your bookmarks and feed readers to point to the new subscribe2 home page. Matt is now officially in charge of development. Send him your feature requests and bug fixes. All support requests really should be sent to the WordPress support forums, so as not to overwhelm Matt with things that other folks can help resolve.

As an aside: useless bug reports -- those reporting "It doesn't work!" with no other details -- contributed greatly to my abandonment of subscribe2. Please don't wear Matt down with the same. Report as much detail as you can when asking about problems. Which version of WordPress are you using? Which version of subscribe2? Who's your hosting provider? Are they using GNU/Linux or Windows? Apache or IIS? Which version of PHP is in use? What steps have you taken to reproduce the problem? What, if anything, works?

subscribe2 is dead. Long live subscribe2!