Mail to users

Cool, sounds like you've found another way of using the hidden module editorially. The original e-mail notifications system is there as part of a system of accountability/checks that are common on Indymedia sites - the e-mail usually goes to a public e-mail list with interested individuals on it.

Would your idea be to have another set of fields that go with the standard reasons for hiding that explain the way that editorial policy works. Or maybe to have just post the content of the free-text field that is displayed with the article?

I think it would be pretty easy to add an option to send the notification, the same one as goes to the one e-mail address, to the user who posted the node. If so would you want the option of not e-mailing them sometimes? If you want to send them something else I can't see any reason not to develop the e-mailing system to become even more flexible.

I was planning on including actions with the 6.x version of the module which would I suspect make all this even easier and more flexible.

I think you picked up the idea pretty well. I'll try and be more specific :-)

The basic idea is to have users work on a hidden node until they are ready to publish it. I imagine that I would have to create a reason called "In moderation" and use this as a preset reasion. The module is very close of achievning what I see as the preffered scenario:

Workflow:
1) User create node
2) Before submitting node, user can choose to hide node. If hidden, an e-mail is sent to the user.
3) User work on node and unhides it. An e-mail (optional) is sent to the user.

The enhancement I see coming are:
1) Allow mail to be sent to the administrators of the node. N.B, a node can have several administrators, as some drupal projects allow to distribute node 'administrator' access.
2) Option to hide node before submitting node. Now it only seem possible to hide it after it's submitted. This should be defined per content type could be called 'Hidden settings'.
3) Be able to bypass the 'hide name' screen if only one preset reason is provided.

It's probably a good idea to utilize the development made to not e-mail, mail immediately, mail periodically. For the workflow shown above, I imagine that using 'Hide content' is sufficient.

I know it's three changes and not only one. However, I wanted to demonstrate the workflow that can be supported by the Hidden module and hopefully the logic is a little more clear. I'm not a programmer, but I'll volunteer as a tester!

> The basic idea is to have users work on a hidden node until they are ready to publish it.
> I imagine that I would have to create a reason called "In moderation" and use this as a preset reasion.
> The module is very close of achievning what I see as the preffered scenario:

You may be as well looking at using - workflow and actions to do this. That and some user access to allow the appropriate user(s) to edit the node.

> a node can have several administrators,
> as some drupal projects allow to distribute node 'administrator' access.

Which ones have you in mind. We had a bit of a discussion about this on the developers list. I'm interested in multiple node ownership as well.

> Option to hide node before submitting node.
> Now it only seem possible to hide it after it's submitted.
> This should be defined per content type could be called 'Hidden settings'.

This certainly will be coming when I add Actions into the hidden module. Chances are I'll do that with Drupal 6.

> Be able to bypass the 'hide name' screen if only one preset reason is provided.

But there would still be the free text reason options?

I'm still certainly up for adding e-mail to node owner(s) about the hidden status of their node. That makes sense. Same for building it into more flexible workflow, but I'd prefer to make that rely on Actions. Looking at workflow and actions generally is a good option too.

Yes, I alread looked at the other workflow modules, including workflow and workflow_ng, but the hidden functionality is superior and fit my need perfectly.

I can of course do some testing of the enhanced module with e-mailing to users as well as being able to publish the node has hidden, and not make it hidden after the node is published. However, I can only do it for 5.x version. I hope you can fit this into your upgrade plans.

I'm putting e-mailing to the node owner on my TO DO list. This is useful functionality.

I've not looked at how actions is integrated into Drupal 6. If it makes sense I'll do 5.6 and 6 actions at the same time. No promises on that one though.