A full-blown notification system

I think it would be great to have a notification module which would allow email notification upon addition of new content :
- new document is added
- new file is uploaded
- new link is added
... etc

On their profile, users could select :
- the frequency of alerts (daily, weekly maybe even monthly for low activity websites)
- section of the site they want to get alerted about (i.e children of a given folder)
- the nature of content they are interrested in : document, files, links... etc

Content editor could choose upon document creation wether or not a given item should be included in notifications or not, by ticking a checkbox.

The admin could select :
- a chunk to use as template to format the alert in html (much like NewsLetter works) : this would allow for different styling of digests for different section of the site.
- placeholders would include something like : [+name_of_resource+] , [+date_added+] , [+author+], [+link_to_item+]

If anyone has ideas to add, be my guest !

And if anyone is interrested in developping this, it would be awesome

I second this emotion; vitally important for my user community.

Another way to approach this is simply to ensure that MODx has the proper event hooks in place. That way somebody else can create a notification module, allowing the MODx developers to focus on the core.

Quote from: Chris at Apr 20, 2006, 06:08 PM

Another way to approach this is simply to ensure that MODx has the proper event hooks in place. That way somebody else can create a notification module, allowing the MODx developers to focus on the core.

We have it on plugin. Check plugin doc, then you will understand why we can compete with other sms/f in terms of flexibility. It’s already doable, we just need someone to actually take the job and finish it

Wendy, when you say we have it on plugin, which one ? NewsLetter ? UserComments with notification ? I sure could look at the code of both and probably get basic meaning out of it, but the System Events doc is quite incomplete and I am not the one who has the skills to finish the job...

I mean, we already have a plugin system that we can hook/tap MODx core system to do certain things outside the core system functionality.
A good way to understand it will be to use MODx manager and see what events that we have in place, and take QuickEdit plugin as an example to see how to code the plugin. Another way to understand it better, you should actualy look inside the core code to understand how the code actually work, before you can tap into the system. It’s not a hard idea, but quite a hassle to do it

But I still like the idea though. Hope someone will take on this project.

I had mentionned this earlier, as well as the fact that I think webdesigners sponsoring module, plugins and snippets development is a possibility to generate business for MODx developpers as well as giving back to the community

I might post a request for a paid development on this one... more about this later this month...
This might be the first of what I hope to be a long list of revenues generated by the MODx adventure !

David, why wait til the end of the month? This is needed ASAP. I pledge $25 toward its development right now. I’m dying to put my next blogsite on modx.

I’m also going to ask that it be as spamproof as can be made, especially from a referrer standpoint. My current wordpress blog gets on average 120 comment spams a day, and it’s all referrer stuff that the plugins don’t seem to be stopping. All robot stuff, the same comment repeated over and over on multiple posts. It’s awful. I know there’s a captcha thing available from admin, could that be tied in here as well? That would help.

About catcha : good idea, we’ll see if that can be done. Maybe it can be added later, the core features I have brought up at the beginning of this post are a priority for me.

I also need this ASAP, for a client... The end of the month is just a week from now, it’s not that far I have to clear a few things before I give more details

Yes, MODx does have events in place that allows a plugin to be triggered whenever such events are raised. All that’s needed is a plugin to listen to these events. You can even use the event system to add user custom system options to MODx. See the FCKEditor plugin for an example of this.

A more powerful event system is on the way,