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

[Tom Dobes]

Robert Douglass wrote:
> I began rewriting the subscriptions module a bit today and wanted to 
> check here if anyone else was also working on it? It would be a shame to 
>  double our efforts.

Dan Ziemecki (dan at ziemecki.com) is the module's creator.  He and I have 
been maintaining it and attempting to make improvements in our spare 
time.  I do not have any major changes pending for it right now.  I have 
CC'ed him on this message so he can let you know whether he has any 
changes in the works.

> Here is what I've done so far:
> 
> You can now subscribe to nodes, users and categories (was nodes, 
> blogs(?) and categories).

Some people might miss the blog-only subscriptions. (i.e. For large 
sites which have many sections other than blogs, a user-based 
subscription may not be a reasonable substitute.)  I don't use them 
myself, though... so I won't complain too loudly.

> The /subscriptions screen where all of the nodes and all of the terms 
> for the entire site were listed in one gigantic table is gone. In its 
> place is a screen with three tabs; categories, users, content. The 
> categories tab lets you subscribe using normal select boxes. Content and 
> users tabs only show you your subscriptions and offer you the chance to 
> unsubscribe. I don't think it is a good idea to use these screens as a 
> means for subscribing to nodes and users.

This page needed some attention, so I'm glad to hear you worked on it. 
Splitting it up into three tabs seems like a good start.  I'm interested 
to see the results.

> Each node has the links (un)subscribe content, (un)subscribe user.

I dislike the idea of having two links there.  I know that's how we deal 
with blog posts right now and that was on my todo list of things to fix. 
  Putting too many links on each node may end up overwhelming the user. 
  (i.e. Would someone who just learned that they can even "login" to a 
site know which link to click if they want to get updates?)  I think we 
should go for a simple "subscribe" link which subscribes to the content 
then provides options to switch that subscription to the user, blog, or 
taxonomy term if desired.

> Users can decide whether they want immediate notification or digest 
> notification at an admin specified interval.

Have you looked at issue #14516?  Can we employ some of the same code 
you've already written to deal with it?

> [...]

It's good to hear that you're working on this and I look forward to 
trying out your version of the module and/or patches.  Thanks for 
working on this!

Tom