Now that your copy of MT-Notifier is installed and configured, you need to create some subscriptions. There are three ways to do this.
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#1: Use the itemset action menus inside Movable Type.
Every list of items in Movable Type (for instance, entries) is called an itemset. Along with this itemset, you'll see a list of available actions in a drop-down control, from which you can select an action to perform on selected items. In this case, you can choose to Add Subscriptions, Block Subscriptions or View Subscription Count. Each of these is fairly self explanatory. Just select items from the list by clicking, then choose the item from the menu and click GO.
When you do, you will be presented with another screen that allows you to add names (for subscribing or blocking subscriptions) or a screen that shows you a count of current subscribers (when viewing the count).
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#2: Create a standalone subscription form.
To allow users to subscribe without you having to create subscriptions for them, you can add this HTML to your page. Just make sure you create it outside of any other forms that you have (including any comment forms):
<form method="get" action="<$MTCGIPath$>plugins/Notifier/mt-notifier.cgi">
<input type="hidden" name="blog_id" value="<$MTBlogID$>" />
Subscribe to This Blog<br/ >
<input name="email" />
<input type="submit" class="button" value="Go" />
</form>
Once you have added this form to the page, users can subscribe to be notified of new entries that are posted on your site. To allow your users to subscribe to a category instead of the entire blog, specify category_id (with a valid category ID) instead of blog_id.
Because there is no category ID tag within an entry, MT-Notifier includes a template tag for use in your templates called <$MTNotifierCatID> that you can use to fill in this field automatically, easily providing a "subscribe to this category" function if you so desire.
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#3: Add a checkbox to your comment form for those leaving a comment.
This is the simplest change, but it requires that someone leave a comment. Just go into your template that contains your comment form and add this HTML:
<p><label for="subscribe">Subscribe to This Entry:</label>
<input type="checkbox" name="subscribe" value="1" /></p>
Once you have added this checkbox to your comment form, then anyone leaving a comment on your blog just needs to check the box and they will automatically be notified of any comments that are left.
Note that this is good for comment notifications only, where the first example of using the itemset action menu was good for entry notifications. You cannot use this method for entry notifications.
If you wish to allow users to subscribe to comments on an entry without having to leave a comment, you can do so by creating a standalone form, then replacing blog_id in the example with entry_id and inserting a valid entry ID (likely using the <$MTEntryID$> template tag).
Should you encounter any problems creating your subscriptions, you might want to visit the Troubleshooting Forms page.
