The notification system is built to handle this. The basis of the notification system is events and handlers. E.g one event is object publishing which can be handled by the subtree handler currently implemented in eZ publish. Another event is time, which is handled by the digest handler.
To get a newsletter system you need to create a new event "newsletter publishing" which could be created when you write a newsletter from the admin ( simple implementation could just include subject and body ). This event would then be sent to the notification system.
You would need to have a handler for newsletter. This handler could e.g. let users check of different topics of interest. The handler would then compare the user settings and send the newsletter to the users with matching settings.
Anyone up for the challenge? The system supports this and it's plugin based. This is also something that we will like to add to eZ publish, mabye we will have this in 3.4 if the interest for it is big.
I would use newsletter functionality. Today I use very powerful newsletter system called www.constantcontact.com, some subset of that functionality would be very nice and much better to have everything in the same system.
The ez crew will develop a more powerful notification handler which may suit this kind of requests, but it will be for us only now (custom built functionality). Why not join this effort by allocating a few hours of your suppport contract for this? Feature-wise, the 3.3 branch is closed, but notification handlers are plugins so it could easily apply for 3.3 (and maybe een 3.2).
On the other hand, a simple approach is possible with the current notification handler, provided you organise your news items in categories (folders) and add buttons which let the user add notification for that folder (and select for example also the weekly digest option).
I think Bård's solution is the most appropriate. People are used to checking off their subscriptions in a single location. The multiple notification button approach would probably be confusing to a lot of users. And as he says it can easily be plugged into existing versions of eZ.
This would be a great step towards improving eZ 3's plug-in library.
working at www.wardnet.com
blogging at www.jamesward.ca
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