You guys might wonder why I brag about all the cool features of Drupal and found so many great reasons and fancy features for using Drupal but still run movable type in a stone-age version here

My marketing blog Marketingfan was already migrated to Drupal 2 months ago and I found one simple thing missing…

Comment follow-up notification mails for anonymous AND registered users with EASY unsubscribe option as we know it!

well, what we know from typical blogging systems like MT or Wordpress just isn't there, so it still has to be created!

Since I started using and implementing Drupal as a CMS and also on blog sites I wondered why

there is no module to implement the profane comment follow up e-mail that I knew from Movable Type

and Wordpress.

However, there are a lot of features in modules like "subscription" and "notify" – which both let you

basically subscribe to content of ANY kind, which is a very generic feature.

None of the modules, hacks and tipp I ran across however offered everything ready-to-go for anonymous users

as well – everyone required the user to be created prior to comment notification, which is a different approach

( "Make it easier to signup and only talk to those that take the extra minute to sign up")

A lot of questions and requirements were posted, to list just a few

http://urlgreyhot.com/personal/weblog/anonymous_commenting_in_drupal_4_5_whats_missing – no updates since may

http://drupal.org/node/64920

=> answer: "just make signup easier" :-/

http://drupal.org/node/76711 => answer: "use subscriptions module" – hey and the anons?

So today I am implementing "comment_notify" with the features

- to mail anonymous users about comment follow-ups
– to mail registered users about comment follow-ups
– to allow both by the click on ONE url to sign out of a specific post followup
– to allow registered users to preset their follow-up setting in their profile

The feature
– to keep anonymous user data persistent in a cookie

is already implemented in comment_info and works great – thanks!

I believe that's a module that's badly needed by all Drupal Bloggers – especially those that understand that a tight contact with commenters (only 1-2% of readers!) is required to build a good user base!

In the last 2 years nobody that would have been able to create a drupal module obviously has since understood the urgent need to drive one-time users that comment back to you site to convert them to real registered users…

IMHO this conversion step is one essential one in building a blog comment community.

Note that there are a lot other related modules that just won't do the job

commentmail

This module is for sending emails to registered users. It includes a

custom "mail" content type, but can also be used to add emailing to any

existing content type.

notify

subscription only for reg'ed users

subscriptions

subscription only for reg'ed users

You can follow up with my work on this module at the drupal site

You can download a first version of the module which has already been tested in production by D'Arcy Norman and on Marketingfan from http://weblog.cemper.com/comment_notify3.zip as I don't have CVS/project/committer access on Drupal.org so far (but I applied)

The zip also contains a small diff file showing the minimal changes needed to the core comments.module … :-) I already earned 2 beers in canada with these 18 hours work :)