I have been hunting the web for days for this feature, and I am kind of surprised it's so hard to find / nobody really talks about it!

I have a Wordpress site with a custom post type that can be pulled by different search attributes. I am looking for a way for users to subscribe to a specific search query string, and once per week, get notified automatically via email when new posts that match their search query string appear.

For example when somebody searches for www.mysite/?Location=California&Radius=25, a list of results come up, and if that user subscribes to this search result, then once per week he/she will be notified of new posts matching that search query

I am open to paid plugins as well, it's just I haven't been able to find one that can do this.

I am comfortable with capturing additional information from users when they're signing up, using jQuery and populating hidden fields' values, etc., if this would help with the end goal.

Edit: I thought of an idea of users subscribing to the RSS feed for each search query, since it's automatically generated by adding /feed/ in the search query URL. But I am not sure how to alert users when new posts appear under the RSS feed, and when to fire the alert (i.e. once a week), and how to display all new posts in an email template.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

I have been hunting the web for days for this feature, and I am kind of surprised it's so hard to find / nobody really talks about it!

I have a Wordpress site with a custom post type that can be pulled by different search attributes. I am looking for a way for users to subscribe to a specific search query string, and once per week, get notified automatically via email when new posts that match their search query string appear.

For example when somebody searches for www.mysite/?Location=California&Radius=25, a list of results come up, and if that user subscribes to this search result, then once per week he/she will be notified of new posts matching that search query

I am open to paid plugins as well, it's just I haven't been able to find one that can do this.

I am comfortable with capturing additional information from users when they're signing up, using jQuery and populating hidden fields' values, etc., if this would help with the end goal.

Edit: I thought of an idea of users subscribing to the RSS feed for each search query, since it's automatically generated by adding /feed/ in the search query URL. But I am not sure how to alert users when new posts appear under the RSS feed, and when to fire the alert (i.e. once a week), and how to display all new posts in an email template.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

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Share Improve this question edited Jul 29, 2014 at 2:20 Steph asked Jul 28, 2014 at 22:56 StephSteph 2111 silver badge33 bronze badges 4

• Plugin recommendations are not permitted here. But this is a interesting question. I will vote it up. – gdaniel Commented Jul 29, 2014 at 2:10
• Thank you gdaniel. I don't think plugin recommendation would help as I literally searched for a bunch of queries in Google and went through 10+ pages and could not find anything that can accomplish this function. If anybody has a plugin to recommend can that be emailed to me instead of posting it here? My email address is alvinbond85css at gmail (not sure if including my email is allowed, if not I will instantly remove it) – Steph Commented Jul 29, 2014 at 2:17
• I'm searching for this to Steph! Have you had any luck? – Scott Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 23:37
• @Steph did you find a plugin that would achieve this or did you need to code your own? Looking for the exact same thing and it's like nobody thought of it before? – Rocco The Taco Commented May 6, 2016 at 1:07

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The answer is simple, you store the search tems and run the search once a week in the user's context if needed, and notify them about changes.