Description
Honk Me (honk-me.app) is a calm notification inbox, Honk for short, and this is its official WordPress plugin. It tells Honk what happens on your WordPress site or WooCommerce store, so you hear about it on your iPhone, your Apple Watch and in the web app.
Honk groups repeats instead of sending each one: the first failed payment is a push, the tenth in a row just adds to a counter.
You decide what you hear about. Every event has its own on/off switch, a priority, and a level on the Honk scale: Light honk, Beep-beep, Loud honk, Long honk or Blast.
You also decide what each notification says, without code. Open Details under an event to see what it can include, from the order total, the payment method and the products to the customer’s name, phone and billing city, and tick what you want. A preview next to the choices shows how the notification will read in Honk.
Notifications can also carry buttons, so you can act on them right away: Email customer and Call customer on orders, Approve and Reply by email on comments and reviews awaiting moderation, Reply by email and Call back on form entries. Pick them in the same Details.
WooCommerce
- New orders, once they’re paid or on hold (classic and block checkout, plus orders created in the admin or through the REST API)
- Order status changes (Completed, Cancelled, On hold…)
- Failed payments
- Refunds, full or partial
- Low stock and out of stock, with an all-clear when the product is back in stock
- New customer accounts
- New product reviews
- Failed subscription renewals (WooCommerce Subscriptions)
- A daily sales summary (optional)
Works with High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) and the block checkout.
Security
- An administrator signs in from a new device or network
- Many failed sign-ins in a short time, with an all-clear when they stop
- A new administrator, or a changed user role
- The administration email address or the site address changed
- Plugins and themes installed, activated, deactivated, deleted or updated
- Theme or plugin files edited in the dashboard
Site health
- Critical errors that crash a page or put WordPress into recovery mode (WordPress’s own email is still sent)
- Site Health critical issues, checked daily
- Failed automatic updates
- Available updates, in one daily message
- Scheduled tasks (WP-Cron) running late
- Disk almost full, if your host lets WordPress check
Content and users
- New user registrations
- Comments awaiting moderation
- Posts pending review
- Published posts (off by default)
Forms
Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Elementor Pro Forms, Fluent Forms and Ninja Forms are found automatically. Each notification is titled with the form’s name, and what people entered is included only if you allow personal data. With Contact Form 7, WPForms and Gravity Forms, you can also leave out single fields of each form.
Private by default
Out of the box, notifications contain no personal data: a new order reads “Order #1234 · €84.00 · 2 items”. Turn on “Include customer names and emails” to also see names, email addresses, comments and form entries, and use each event’s Details to leave out what you don’t need. Phone numbers, billing cities and customers’ notes are only sent if you tick them. While the switch is off, nothing personal is sent, whatever is ticked.
Never slows your site down
Notifications go out in the background (through Action Scheduler when WooCommerce is installed, otherwise WP-Cron) and are retried automatically. A slow or unreachable Honk server never holds up a page or a checkout, and a retry never notifies you twice.
Languages
Honk Me is translated on translate.wordpress.org, and WordPress installs the translations for your site’s languages by itself. Notifications use your site’s language, or another installed language you pick for them.
External services
This plugin connects to the Honk API to deliver your notifications. Honk Me is a notification service at honk-me.app, run by the plugin’s authors; you can also use your own Honk server. Nothing is sent until you add an API key in Settings Honk.
What is sent, and when:
- When an event you turned on happens (for example a new order, a failed payment, many failed sign-ins or a form entry), one message is sent to
POST /v1/messageson the Honk server. It contains a title and a text, the Honk-scale level and the priority, a group key, the event type, your site’s address as the source, the environment (production, staging or development), a link to the related screen in your dashboard, and a few technical details (for example the order number, total and status, or the file name of a plugin that changed). If you choose buttons in an event’s Details, it also contains them: a title and a link, such as a link to approve a comment in your dashboard, or an email address or phone number to write to or call, which is sent only when the notification already includes it. - Personal data is not sent by default. If you turn on “Include customer names and emails,” messages can also contain the name and email address of a customer, user or commenter, the text of a comment or review, the fields of a submitted form, the usernames tried during failed sign-ins, and the full IP address of a new administrator sign-in (otherwise only its network, such as 203.0.113.0/24). A customer’s phone number, billing city and country and order note are sent only if you also tick them in an event’s Details, and Details let you leave out any of the others.
- When you click “Send test notification”, one test message is sent.
- The settings screen reads the server’s public configuration (
GET /v1/config) at most every 12 hours, and again when you save the settings or send a test, to know which features the server supports. This request contains no data about your site. - The heartbeat (once Honk supports it, and only if you turn it on) checks in every 5 minutes with your site’s address and environment.
Honk’s privacy policy: https://honk-me.app/privacy. Terms and support: https://honk-me.app/support.
The plugin doesn’t track you or your visitors, and it loads no external scripts, styles or fonts.
Screenshots
Installation
- In your dashboard, go to Plugins Add Plugin, search for “Honk Me” and click Install Now. Or upload the
honk-mefolder to/wp-content/plugins/. - Activate the plugin.
- In Honk (https://honk-me.app), open your project, go to Keys and create a new key. Copy it.
- In WordPress, go to Settings Honk, paste the key into “API key” and click “Send test notification”. The test should reach your Honk inbox within seconds.
- Choose your events, their levels and priorities. Open Details under an event to choose what its notification says, then click Save Changes.
WooCommerce stores also get a Honk tab under WooCommerce Settings that links to the same page.
FAQ-e
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Do I need a Honk account?
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Yes. Honk is where your notifications arrive. Create a project in Honk, add a key under Keys, and paste it into Settings Honk.
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Is anything sent before I add a key?
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No. Until a key is saved, the plugin doesn’t listen to any events and sends nothing.
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Will it slow down my checkout?
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No. Notifications are queued and sent in the background, with Action Scheduler when WooCommerce is installed and with WP-Cron otherwise. At checkout, the plugin only saves one small queue entry.
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What if Honk is down or slow?
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The plugin tries again with longer and longer pauses, for up to about two hours, and waits longer whenever the server asks it to. Each notification has its own ID, so a retry never notifies you twice. Errors that trying again can’t fix, such as a revoked key, aren’t retried; you’ll find them under Settings Honk Delivery log.
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What personal data is sent?
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None by default. Orders are described by their number, total and number of items, and form entries only by the form’s name. If you turn on “Include customer names and emails,” names, email addresses, comments, reviews and form entries are included, and each event’s Details let you leave out what you don’t need or add a customer’s phone number, billing city or note. While the switch is off, none of these are sent, whatever is ticked, and the delivery log hides titles that might contain personal data.
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Which form plugins are supported?
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Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Elementor Pro Forms, Fluent Forms and Ninja Forms. Active ones are found automatically and get their own switch.
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Can I run my own Honk server?
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Yes. Enter its address as the server URL. It must use https; http works only for local and private addresses, for development.
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Why do some events come with an all-clear?
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Things that start and stop, such as many failed sign-ins, a product out of stock, scheduled tasks running late or a Site Health issue, are sent twice: once as a problem when they start, and once as an all-clear (a recovery, in Honk’s words) when they’re over. Honk shows both as one episode that closes when the all-clear arrives.
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How does it know a sign-in is from a new device?
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For administrators, the plugin remembers the browser, operating system and IP network of recent sign-ins (up to 20, for 180 days), stored only as hashes, never as readable details. A sign-in that matches none of them is reported. The very first sign-in after you install the plugin is only remembered.
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Can I choose what a notification says?
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Yes. In Settings Honk, open Details under an event. It lists what that notification always includes, such as the order number and a link to the order, what you can add or leave out, and the buttons it can carry (such as Email customer or Approve), with a preview of how it will read in Honk. Your choices apply to every notification of that event from then on. Buttons are off until you pick them.
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Can I change a message before it’s sent?
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Most changes don’t need code: use an event’s Details. Developers can also use the
honk_messagefilter. It receives the message fields and the event ID; return an empty array to drop the message. -
Where’s the heartbeat?
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The heartbeat (“tell me when my site stops checking in”) needs support on the Honk server, which is on its way. The option shows up in Settings Honk as soon as your server supports it.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Honk Me – Notifications for Sites, Shops and Forms” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Honk Me – Notifications for Sites, Shops and Forms” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.2.0
- Buttons on notifications: email or call the customer, reply to a form entry or a comment, approve a comment. Choose them for each event under Details Buttons. They are off by default, so your notifications stay as they were.
0.1.0
- First release: WooCommerce, security, site health, content and form notifications, plus a test button; for each event, a choice of what the notification says, with a preview; background sending with automatic retries; notifications in your site’s language.