FAQs

Other plugins use third-party server's that send notifications for a fee. This plugin has a built in hub, allowing WordPress to send out the push notifications directly. For free.

Of course: we have created a couple of videos that demonstrates how it works.

For Web Push notifications:

For mobile notifications:

Push Notifications for WordPress is primarily intended for mobile developers who do not want to develop their server-side back-end. Supporting push notifications is incredibly complicated. This plugin lets you focus on creating the apps, without the hassle.

Oh, and if you use only Safari and Web Push (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others) notifications, you do not need to create the apps! When visiting a site that supports notifications, the user will receive a prompt asking you if he would like to turn them on.

The Web Push notifications also work on Android, even if the browser isn't currently active--just like an installed native app. That's a big deal!

Push Notifications for WordPress requires:

• WordPress 4.5 or later with "pretty" permalinks (recommended WordPress 4.9 or later).
• PHP 5.3 or later (PHP 5.6 for Web Push notifications notifications, recommended PHP 7.0 or later).
• Inbound and outbound TCP packets over ports 2195 and 2196 (for iOS and Safari notifications).
• PHP's cURL and GMP support (for Web Push notifications).
• An app (for iOS and Android notifications).

Moreover, to activate Safari and Web Push notifications on your multisite, we strongly recommend it uses sub-domains instead of sub-directories (i.e. https://site1.yournetwork.com instead of https://yournetwork.com/site1).

More requirements for Safari and Web Push notifications here.

If you want to send iOS and/or Safari notifications: yes. In this case you need a push notification certificate, which requires the Apple Developer Program membership.

Yes. Starting from version 3.0, for Android notifications it supports the Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) who has taken the place of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). To upgrade from GCM to FCM please see the official migration guide.

Push Notification for Posts has been discontinued on February 2016 in order to focus entirely on Push Notifications for WordPress. If you purchased Push Notification for Posts contact us to get a discount.

Building an app is difficult and you need to be a developer. But... if you use only Safari and Web Push (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others) notifications, you do not need to create the apps!

The Apple Push Notification service includes a feedback service to give us information about failed remote notifications (more info in the Local and Remote Notification Programming Guide). Luckily you do not have to worry because our plugin does everything for you.

You can test a push notification through the Tokens page:

Yes, but it requires a great deal of caution.

Two things in particular:

1. In Performance → Page cache → Rejected user agents you have to add the user agent of your app so that it is never sent a cached copy:

1. In Performance → Database cache → Never cache the following pages you have to add /pnfw/* and push_sw.js

Yes, but it requires a great deal of caution.

Two things in particular:

1. In Advanced → Rejected User Agents you have to add the user agent of your app so that it is never sent a cached copy.
2. In Advanced → Add here strings (not a filename) that forces a page not to be cached you have to add /pnfw/ and push_sw.js

Yes, it supports WPML.

No. Polylang mimics the WPML behavior, but without fully replacing it. This causes compatibility problems with Push Notifications for WordPress.

Yes, it supports nginx but you must add these lines in the virtual host configuration file to support rewrite rules:

server {
	[...]
	location / {
		try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
	}
	[...]
}

The maximum send rate depends on many conditions, especially the performance of your server and the operating system to which you are sending notifications. We strongly suggest to use PHP 7.1+ for better results.

To give you an idea, with a basic VPS hosting and older PHP versions you can expect:

• iOS: 15/20 notifications per second
• Android: 20/25 notifications per second
• Safari: 10/15 notifications per second
• Web Push: 5/10 notifications per second

Of course, you can get better performances with higher level servers and PHP 7.1+.

Yes. It supports Safari push notifications on macOS to send notifications to your website users, right on their Mac desktop--even when Safari isn’t running. And it supports Web Push (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others) notifications.

Safari and Web Push notifications work just like push notifications for apps, but you don't need to build an app (see requirements below).

Safari push notifications require:

• An Apple Developer Program account (info here).
• A website under HTTPS protocol.

HTTPS is obligatory for serving the push package. You do not need to spend a fortune for the SSL certificate--there are some cheap options available. For example, Namecheap offers domain-level SSL certificates starting from $9.00/yr. Please note a dedicated IP is also highly recommended.

Beyond the Safari notifications going HTTPS is a good thing: Google has announced that it will give you a ranking boost (more info here).

macOS 10.9 Mavericks and later and Safari 7 and later users.

Please note all Safari users will be anonymous (info here).

The underlying Safari Push Notifications service on Apple’s end has some bugs on older macOS. The bug has been reported to Apple, and appears to be confirmed by a few sources. With macOS High Sierra the main problems have been fixed.

To enable logging on macOS, as reported in the Technical Note TN2265, use the following commands:

$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool TRUE
$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSLogLevel -int 7
$ sudo killall apsd

The logs are stored in /Library/Logs/apsd.log.

Web Push (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others) notifications require:

• PHP 5.6 (recommended PHP 7.0 or later) with GMP extension.
• A website under HTTPS protocol.

Service workers require secure origins to ensure that the service worker script is from the intended origin and hasn’t come about from a man-in-the-middle attack. That means using HTTPS on live sites. You do not need to spend a fortune for the SSL certificate--there are some cheap options available. For example, Namecheap offers domain-level SSL certificates starting from $9.00/yr. Please note a dedicated IP is also highly recommended.

Beyond the Web Push notifications going HTTPS is a good thing: Google has announced that it will give you a ranking boost (more info here).

Users with:

• Chrome 50 and later.
• Firefox 46 and later.
• Edge from Windows 10 April 2018 Update and later.
• Opera mobile version 37 and later, desktop version 42 and later.

Please note all Web Push users will be anonymous (info here).

Web Push notifications, unlike Safari notification, are only delivered when the browser is running. If your browser isn't running, notifications will be received when it is opened the first time. The only exception is Android: in such a case they are received and displayed even if the browser isn't currently active--just like an installed native app.

Moreover, web push notifications are not supported in private browsing mode.

Please note the Web Push notifications by default do not include the payload. You can change this behavior by checking Add payload to web push notifications in Push Notifications → Settings → Web tab. But note that it requires that your server meets these requirements and can drastically slow down the sending rate:

• ext-gmp
• ext-mcrypt
• ext-mbstring
• lib-openssl

Yes. After the expiration date your plugin will continue to work but you won't have access to updates and support.

Please note you can only download Push Notifications for WordPress if you have an active subscription. Hence, please download your updates as they come out.

WordPress 5.0.1 changed the MIME type verification for uploaded files. As a temporary workaround you can use this plugin.

If you've already checked that all settings are correct, it could be a hosting or WordPress configuration problem.

In short, to send in the background push notifications, we use the WordPress standard function wp_schedule_single_event(). We have verified that it does not work properly if:

• Your hosting is blocking the call to fsockopen(). WordPress uses the fsockopen PHP function to make a request to the wp-cron.php file that's located in the WordPress installation directory.
• You are using CloudFlare or a caching plugin which does not trigger the WP Cron.
• Your server is unable to resolve itself.

Our advice is to contact your hosting provider.

To debug, you can force to run a cron job by launching:

$ wget --delete-after http://yourwebsite/wp-cron.php

or

$ wget --delete-after http://yourwebsite/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron

We also recommend you to install a plugin like WP Crontrol. Then go to the Tools → Cron Events menu and search for the event pnfw_send_notifications_for_post_in_background. If it is present it's a warning: it means that WP Cron is not configured correctly and has not been able to to consume the event properly. Click on the button Run Now and see what happens.

Your server is unable to connect to the push service.

This can be caused by:

• The SSL certificate you are using, which is invalid or it has expired (remember that a certificate is valid for 1 year).
• The certificate password you specified, which is not correct.
• The fact that you are using a production certificate instead of a development one (or vice versa).
• The fact that Push Notifications for WordPress can't receive inbound and outbound TCP packets over ports 2195 and 2196.

Your server is unable to connect to the FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging).

This can be caused by:

• The fact that cURL is not installed on your server.
• The fact that Push Notifications for WordPress can't reach the URL https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send.
• The fact that cURL is unable to verify the certificate provided by the server. You should properly add the root CA in the CA store directory of your machine.

You can do a simple test by launching this command on your server:

curl --header "Authorization: key=xxx" --header Content-Type:"application/json" https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send -d "{\"registration_ids\":[\"ABC\"]}"

Please change xxx with your Google API Key.

This is due to the current WP Cron implementation which is not exactly rock solid. We suggest to use a real cron (here is an example, but use something like 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes).

Notifications are sent in a background process. It is possible that if there are many to send the process is killed by PHP or Apache. Our advice is to contact your hosting provider.

If you are using Apache with mod_fcgid, likely the FcgidIOTimeout is too low (the default timeout for FastCGI scripts is 45 seconds).

If you are using a VPS with WHM installed you can change it in this way:

1. Login to WHM → Apache Configuration → Include Editor → Post VirtualHost Include → All
2. Copy and paste following code:<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
FcgidIOTimeout 360
</IfModule>

3. Restart Apache.

This condition occurs when the process which sends notification was prematurely interrupted (see question above). To solve it go to Push Notifications → Settings, select the tab Misc box and press the button Fix progress bar.

You have enabled OAuth, but you're not passing the required parameters. You can solve in two ways:

1. By disabling OAuth under Push Notifications → OAuth.
2. By passing the required parameters (info here).

Please note: if you just did a migration of your site to HTTPS, you should accept signed requests for both HTTP and HTTPS. Go to: Push Notifications → OAuth, and enable "Accept both HTTP and HTTPS requests".

As outlined in the documentation some APIs must be called using the POST HTTP method (e.g. the Register API) and other using the GET HTTP method (e.g. the Posts API list). More info here.

If you are sure you have used the correct HTTP method be sure to check the settings of your web server. In particular, some users have reported that nginx has different URL mapping rules than Apache (see above).

You can debug with cURL using this command:

$ curl https://yourwebsite.com/pnfw/register/ -i --data "os=Android&token=aa"


You've probably installed W3 Total Cache. Read our notes above.

The badge indicates the number of notifications that have not been read by that user. The badge count must be aligned both on the server- and client-side.

Server-side, you can set a post as read using the Posts API (details): "When this API is called, the post is considered "read" by this specific device token–and consequently by the corresponding user. Therefore, the statistics and the badge on iOS are updated."

Client-side, when a user read a post it's up to you to decrease it using the UIApplication's applicationIconBadgeNumber property.

When WPML is active, active custom post types and taxonomies must be set as translatable in WPML → Translation options.

Probably you've made the network activation of Push Notifications for WordPress. This is not the proper way to activate it. You should activate Push Notifications for WordPress for each individual subsite.

In general, if a plugin says network activate then do so. If it does not, then don't.

You are using the default WordPress permalink structure. Change the WordPress permalink structure (Settings → Permalinks) from "default" to one of the so-called "pretty" permalinks.

We suggest you to carefully read the log on the Debug plugin page (Push Notifications → Debug). Notifications are sent asynchronously: the Debug page gather in one place all the information and errors you might find useful. Check it frequently.

We suggest you to read the Apple's Technical Note TN2265.

If the timestamp displayed in the Debug page is incorrect, the time, or timezone, or daylight savings time configured on your website is most likely incorrect.

To fix this, follow these steps:

• Log in to your WordPress site as an administrator.
• Go to Settings → General.
• Change the timezone dropdown to a city that’s in your timezone.
• Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

To fix this, follow these steps:

• Log in to your WordPress site as an administrator.
• Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
• Press on Deactivate under Push Notifications for WordPress.
• Press on Activate under Push Notifications for WordPress.
• Reenter the license data under Push Notifications → License.

Your application may be in Forced Stop state. To fix this, follow these steps:

• Open the Settings app.
• Choose Apps (on some Samsung phones, touch the General tab atop the Settings app screen, and then choose the Application Manager item).
• Choose the app that’s causing problems.
• Make sure the Force Stop button is not grayed out. If it's the case open your application almost once to exit this state.

Please note that some security applications try to force stop state at startup so you have to whitelist them.
If you develop with Android Studio you must be warned that running applications with debugger leaves them in a forced stop state.

Firebase uses Notification messages when our plugin uses Data messages.

With the Notification message Firebase automatically displays the message to end-user devices on behalf of the client app. With the Data message client app is responsible for processing data messages.

More info in the official FCM documentation.

You can enable Notification messages in the Settings → Android → Firebase enabling Use the Notification message instead of the Data message

Yes. We have tried to make the process very simple.

Follow these steps:

1. Make sure the setting "Remove data on uninstall" is unchecked.
2. Upload Push Notification for WordPress without activating it.
3. Disable Push Notification for WordPress (Lite).
4. Activate Push Notification for WordPress.
5. Uninstall Push Notification for Posts (Lite).

That's all! Enjoy all the advanced features of Push Notification for WordPress!

Yes. We have tried to make the process very simple. And yes, if you have a license of Push Notification for Posts, you can get a discount on Push Notification for WordPress.

Follow these steps:

1. Backup your WordPress database as explained here.
2. Upgrade Push Notification for Posts to version 2.0 or later without uninstalling previous version (very important: previous versions, when uninstalled, would remove all subscribers and tokens).
3. Make sure the setting "Remove data on uninstall" is unchecked.
4. Upload Push Notification for WordPress without activating it.
5. Disable Push Notification for Posts.
6. Activate Push Notification for WordPress.
7. Uninstall Push Notification for Posts.

That's all! Enjoy all the advanced features of Push Notification for WordPress!

Our advice is to use the plugins Duplicator/Duplicator Pro. If you need to move WordPress, these plugins greatly simplifies the process. We do not support any other method to move the tokens automatically.

The following are some ideas to proceed in a different way, but the implementation is left to you (our team does not offer support):

1. Go to the Push Notifications → Tokens and click on the Export CSV button. This will download a file with all the tokens plus some information about each of them.
2. For each of these tokens, make a cURL call like this:

$ curl https://yoursite/pnfw/register/ --data "os=xxx&token=yyy&lang=zzz"

Note that in this way a new user for each token will be created, thus losing its past history.

Large blogs require special attention. Sending tens of thousands of notifications and the corresponding volume of visitors will put pressure on your hosting.

Here are some tips:

1. Make sure that Push Notifications for WordPress is updated to the latest version.
2. Speed up the APIs as shown in the next FAQ.
3. Replace the WordPress Cron with a real cron job (tutorial).
4. Reduce the size of some tables that may have grown too much. First, make a backup copy of the tables wp_push_sent, wp_push_viewed, and wp_push_logs. Then run these SQL commands:

   TRUNCATE TABLE wp_push_sent;
TRUNCATE TABLE wp_push_viewed;
TRUNCATE TABLE wp_push_logs;

   OPTIMIZE TABLE wp_push_sent;
OPTIMIZE TABLE wp_push_viewed;
OPTIMIZE TABLE wp_push_logs;

   Please note: in your case the prefix wp_ could be different.

5. Consider moving to a more performing hosting.

In general our advice is not to send too many notifications a day. If you send many notifications a day, the previous ones may not be finished, and therefore overlap, causing a double (or triple) load on the server!

With the current architecture of WordPress, when an API is called, every single active plugin on your site is loaded into the request. This obviously creates a significant overhead which is amplified when you enable Chrome and Firefox notifications without payload.

Luckily there are some great solutions, such as the one described here. Please remember to whitelist:

1. Push Notifications for WordPress.
2. Its add-ons (App Only Post Type, Merge Push Notifications) you are eventually using.
3. WPML.
4. The plugins of which your are using the shortcodes.
5. The plugins you have developed that implement its hooks.

Yes. We're a team of mobile developers. We put our expertise to work on custom projects for companies that need great apps. Interested? Contact us.

Let us know, we will do everything to help you. Contact us →