Alternative to default UI

As there's been lots of talk about an alternative for the default collapsiblock UI at the bottom of the node (http://drupal.org/node/189977), I thought I would start the process. In my design it's best to simply have the "Subscribe to post" as a node link that takes you to a separate page.

The following consists of adding two functions to template.php and creating a node with a small php snippet.

On my site, we use "watch" instead of "subscribe", so just substitute the words accordingly.

First, let's create a 'watch page' with PHP input format:

$nid = $_GET['nid'];
if ($nid) {
  echo drupal_get_form('subscriptions_ui_node_form', node_load($nid));
} else {
  preg_match('/nid\=(\d+)/', $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], $matches);
  $redirect = $matches[1];
  if ($redirect) {
    echo "<h2 class='title'>Watch settings saved.</h2>";
    echo "<h4><a href='/node/$redirect'>Go back to the post</a></h4>";
  }
}

note: include the php start/end tags

This will take in a node id from the URL variable 'nid' and display the subscriptions form. Take note of the node id of the page.

Now we alter the default subscription form.
* Replace 567 with your 'watch page' nid in both functions.
* Replace 'pages/watch' with your 'watch page' alias (node/567,etc) in both functions (be mindful of regex syntax in first one).
--- template.php ---

function subscriptions_form_alter($form_id, &$form) {
  $watch_page_nid = '567';
  if ($form_id == 'subscriptions_ui_node_form') {
  	if (preg_match('/^\/pages\/watch/',$form['#action'])) {
  		if ($form['#parameters']['1']->nid == $watch_page_nid) {
  			// unset the "watch" form on the watch page
  			$unset = 1;
  		} else {
  			// modify form
  			$form['wrapper']['#collapsible'] = FALSE;
  			$form['wrapper']['#collapsed'] = FALSE;
  			$form['wrapper']['#description'] = '<h2 style="margin-bottom:0">'.$form['#parameters']['1']->title.'</h2>';
  			$form['#action'] = '/pages/watch?nid=552&r=1';
  		}
  	} else {
  		// unset all watch forms except on the "watch" page
  		$unset = 1;
  	}
  	if ($unset == 1) {
  		$form = array();
  	}
  }
}

function node_link_alter(&$node, &$links) {
	foreach($links as $module => $link) {
		/* only run this when other node links are present (statistics_counter being 
		 * the indicator), otherwise the 'title' gets added to tags.
		 */
		if (strstr($module, 'statistics_counter')) {
			if ($node->nid == '567') {
				$links = array(); // no links on the watch page
			} else {
				$links['subscriptions'] = array(
					'title' => t('Subscribe'),
					'href' => 'pages/watch',
					'query' => 'nid='.$node->nid,
					'attributes' => array('title' => 'Get update notifications'), 
				);
			}
		}
	}
}

This approach uses the already present building blocks with very minimal alterations. I welcome any feedback to improve this.