I have been looking for a solution to Anonmous Publishing for a while now. After trying various trickery with hook_form_alter and Rules (to no avail) I wrote a bit about it on drupal.se (http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/53470/how-can-anonymous-users-...). I started to write my own, but now that this module has been revived, I wanted to see if what I am developing is similar, and if so contribute what I have developed so far.
As was mentioned in the drupal.se, this is similar functionality to charlotte.ebayclassifieds.com and charlotte.craigslist.com (or any city variation of those sites) where a person can anonymously submit content and then authenticate it, as well as other CRUD activities, via email. In planning my module, here is what I came up with:
1. Allow anon user to post item.
1.1 User fills out node submit form including email address
1.2 User receives email with several links for management
1.2.1 Authenticate, which publishes the node (see 2 for more functionality related to this)
1.2.2 Edit - which allows that post to be edited ***
1.2.3 Delete - which allows that post to be deleted ***
1.3 User clicks Authenticate link and node is published (or submitted for moderation)
2. Create account for anon user 'behind the scenes'
2.1 When anonymous node is submitted, then an account is created for that email address
2.2 Unauthenticated user is placed into "Unauthenticated user role" (functionality of Login toboggin)
2.3 In email, user is notified that an account was created for them. They can click to verify and then continue to manage all ads, etc
3. User decides to verify the pre-created account
3.1 user gets perks associated with having normal account (not restricted to number of posts per hour, etc)
So, in a tiny nutshell, that is what I am trying to accomplish. Looking at the code, Anonymous Publishing seems to have the structure to easily accomplish most of that. In sum, my goals are to allow people to use the system anonymously but maintain security and integrity as if they indeed had an account. If they decide to create an account, then they get more perks of having an account. If they do not sign up, however, they can continue to use the system. At the same time, because an account with that email address was created behind the scenes, whether they verify it or not, we still have control over blocking the account and deleting their content should they be spammers or abuse the system. In other words, all the account management and moderation control is available, even if they never move forward with creating the account which is strengthed by A_P's already existing 'block email address' functionality.
What do you think?
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Comments
Comment #1
gisleThank you for sharing that. What you've written sums up what I perceive as the design goals of Anonymous Publishing in a precise way (so I'll probably steal some if that text for the yet unwritten extended help-file).
Comment #2
gislePlease take a look at the latest 7.x-1.x-dev release.
There is now also a submodule named "Anonymous publishing claim". Enabling it will add "lazy registration" as suggested in your point #2.
"Lazy registration" is where users post first, and register later. When the user register, he or her will see a tab named "Claim anonymous posts" on the "my account" profile page. This tab will allow them to "claim" the posts they created as anonymous publishers for their profile (i.e. if "claimed", these posts will be owned by their logged in profile).
Still outstanding is to have a link in the verification email that allows mangement of the anonymous post before it is published.
Please review.
Comment #3
arlingtonvoicellc commentedI'm curious, I'm trying to find a solution similar to the Craigslist Model but for users who HAVE registered. Despite using Mollum and requiring users to have an account to submit certain node types, I still get spam submissions. I would like to implement an e-mail verification, much like the one talked about in this module. My concern is that this module might not extend to user roles. Does anybody know?
Comment #4
gisleThis module only require email-verification from unregistered users. I currently don't see the use case for requiring registered users to verify by email when posting.
You can set up Drupal to require email verification when people register. If you do that, why do you require additional email verification when some registered user post someting?
Comment #5
arlingtonvoicellc commentedDespite the registration verification, I still have some spam accounts getting through. It's not uncommon for a real person to register an account and then unleash a spambot on your site. E-mail verification of new, unmoderated content nodes is an additional security step I would like to implement to prevent just that.
Comment #6
gisleThere are spam bots that (e.g. XRumer) that know how to follow up registration with email verification.
How do you know that whatever registers an account and then start spamming is a real person and not a spambot that knows how to do email verification?
I honestly don't think requiring email verification from registered users will help. If the spambot is capable of bypassing email verification when registering an account, it will also be capable of doing so when posting. This extra hurdle of verifying the email again is only going to annoy humans.
Comment #7
arlingtonvoicellc commentedYou make a good point. Guess there is really no way to tell for sure who is human and who isn't.
Comment #8
tanius commentedTried to use the anonymous_publishing_claim submodule as suggested in #2. I enabled it, posted anonymously some content, verified / activated it by confirming the e-mail, and then registered an account with the same e-mail address. The content published anonymously before remained unchanged as authored by "Anonymous".
What is supposed to happen / how to use this feature? (I looked if maybe I have first to add a new field to the registration for to allow claiming content during registration, but could not find such a thing. Also I read the manual of course, but didn't find something in there about the "claim" feature so far.)
Comment #9
gisleTo quote from comment #2 above:
Below is a picture of how this tab shall appear as part of the user profile for a user named "Bob":
If you do not see this tab when you log in with your new user and you have "unclaimed" content, please file a bug report.
Comment #11
gisleI am closing this as there is a release candidate available for download and the feature set of Anonymous Publishing is now more or less frozen up to the release of 7.x-1.0.
If you find a bug in the release candidate, please post as a regular bug report in the project's issue queue.
If you have a support request, please post as a regular support request in the project's issue queue.
If you have a feature request, please post as a regular feature request in the project's issue queue. Don't expect it to be worked on soon unless accompanied a patch that implements the feature.