[drupal-devel] Is anybody doing any major work on subscriptions module?

[Dries Buytaert]

>> I've committed the new subscriptions module to my sandbox 
>> (robertdouglass) along with a small upgrade script which converts all 
>> 'blog' subscriptions to 'user' subscriptions.
>>
>> Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I've implemented the 
>> feature set which I described in my first mail (minus the link on the 
>> user page) and screenshots can be seen here:
>> http://www.webs4.com/image/tid/6


Here are some comments:

1. The screenshots make me believe that I will get 3 digests/day when 
'subscription format' is set to 'digest' for the 3 categories.  As a 
first time user, I would have preferred/expected to receive one 
aggregate digest.  I'm somewhat confused about this.

2. Why are the options (eg. "digest or instant") repeated in the form 
item's title?

3. For consistency with the rest of Drupal, write "Content 
subscriptions", not "Content Subscriptions".  Ditto on the category and 
user subscription pages.

4. I don't like the new links on http://www.webs4.com/node/88.  I think 
it makes more sense to add a 'subscribe'-tab.  Managing subscriptions 
is an action, so it ought to be a tab (at least for now).  Making it a 
tab opens up the possibility to provide some context information (eg. 
an explanation and a link to my current subscriptions) and can be used 
to help the user make decisions (eg. whether to subscribe to the user, 
the category, or just this particular post).

5. On http://www.webs4.com/node/92 some sentences seem to end with a 
point while others do not.  Also, the use of bold/strong in form 
descriptions is not really consistent with the rest of Drupal.

6. I'm not sure I would add the 'my subscription' page in the main 
navigation menu.  IMO it makes more sense to integrate it with my user 
page -- under 'my account'.  There is no 'my profile' menu either; 
profiles are managed under 'my account'.  Yes, there is a 'my projects' 
on drupal.org but that ought to get fixed IMO.

7. To deal with comment spam, duplicate posts or users (still) editing 
their newly posted comments, it might be a good idea to include a delay 
-- even for the instant mode.  That is, only send out the e-mails after 
2 hours or so. Like that, site administrators and users have a small 
time window in which they can fix up any mess.  For example, Jeremy 
just got 10.000 comment spams on kerneltrap.com.  This makes me wonder: 
maybe we should only support digest mode, but make the digest interval 
user configurable.  That is, make it so that the user can choose 
between different digest intervals (eg. every 2 hours, every 12 hours, 
every 24 hours, every week).

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/