Hi, I'm in need of an specific newsletter functionality. I'm developing a drupla site that is a jobs searching portal. i want to give each user the chance to select options for the emails he/she receives. To clarify: i have a list of jobs in the site, and i want the user to subscribe a newsletter and at the moment of subscription, select among "filters" (could be taxonomies, or any field) eg.: "job category", "job type", "posted # days ago", etc. so the email the user would recieve is a list of jobs filtered by his/her personal preferencies.
I've tried vaguely simplenews module, but found it complicate and i don't think this module gives me the functionality i need. i actually don't think there is a module that does this, please if there is, tell me which one.

Otherwise, if it doesn't exists i'll give it a try to develop it myself. I'm just learning module developing but i'll give it a try. But i'll need some suggestions on how to estructure the module, i have some ideas but being a begginer there may be better ways that the one i'm thinking.

this is what i'd do:
i'd add a checkbox for the user to subscribe or unsubscribe from emails, and the preferences form(the filters) in the user edit page... i'm thinking on integrate this with views, so the complete (unfiltered) list of nodes would be a view and the filters form would be the view's exposed filters form from this view...
so, i'd add a module setting form where the desired view is chosen by administrator

then it would just be a matter of quering the nodes filtered by the user preferences and format it into the email body, and send it. of course this would be done for each of the subscribed users.

Then i should implement a cron job to set the freceuncy of the emails to be sent.

This are my questions:
Is this planification right?
is this the better way of doing this? i'm not experience in newsletters so i don't actually know if this is an effitient way of doing this, i mean, i believe this could be quite a heavy request to process and send all the emails for all the subscribed users (if they are lots). maybe not, i don't know.
what do you think?

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

subscriptions and newsletters aren't quite the same thing.

you might want to take a look at these modules:

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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
-- Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Search is your best friend." -- Worldfallz

NewZeal’s picture

I've just been working on the notifications module which provides the facility for users to select updates according to content type which is partially what you want. To further add filtering for taxonomy would simply require a modification in the form of a submodule. Notifications has plenty of hooks, however it is rather complex and if you are finding SimpleNews complex, then this may not be a good idea.

Your requirements in themselves are reasonably complex and require a sufficiently complex solution. I would install Notifications and see if you can get this to do what you want. If you created different content types for different types of jobs then you would have instant satisfaction.