By no2e on

What I need

I search for a solution for the following:

  • If a user visits the front page, he shall get a list of all new content (new nodes and new comments)
  • he shall be able to mark selected or all items as "read"
    • if marked as read, the item will not appear on the front page anymore
  • he shall be able to view the list of all items marked as read (archive, activity log, something like that)
    • and he shall be able to mark selected items as "unread", so they appear on the front page again

What for?

It's a site with high frequent posts and only a few users. It's important, to be informed about each new node and each new comment! (not only "has new comments", but every single comment, because we use threaded comments).

The "normal" workflow would be:

  1. user visits front page: ah, there are 4 new nodes and 12 new comments
  2. user opens the new nodes/comments in tabs
  3. user marks everything as "read" at front page

The "to do" workflow would be:

  1. user visits front page: ah, there are 4 new nodes and 12 new comments
  2. user opens the new nodes/comments in tabs
  3. node 3: oh, that's a hard topic - I'll get to it later
  4. user marks everything as "read" at front page, except for node 3 -- so this item will be presented to him again, when he visits the front page (this front page works like a todo list)

The "archive / activity log" workflow would be:

  1. user visits front page: ah, let me see, what happened in the past
  2. user selects "show unread items"
  3. he browses through the (paged) lists, sorted by creation date

Use email?

Yes, a solution might be, to send a new email for each new node and each new comment to all users. So the user uses his email client to stay organized (save emails for "to do", archive all emails for "read" stuff). But a solution on the Drupal front page itself would be more comfortable.

Modules?

From what I understand, Activity goes in this direction, but without this important "mark as read" / "mark as unread" option.

Example

Origo (built with Drupal, see showcase: Origo - Distributed Software Development) has this feature. Afaik they use an unpublished custom module for this.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

no2e’s picture

no2e commented

Hmm, no chance?

Noddy’s picture

Noddy commented

You could use the Flags module for marking nodes as read/unread. To show only unread nodes on the frontpage you can create a view that exactly do this. By using Views' built-in exposed filters you could allow editors to switch between the display of read/unread nodes.
And in combination with the awesome VBO module you could also create views that allows your editors to mark nodes as read/unread in bulk.

narendar_medoju@tecnics.com’s picture

narendar_medoju@tecnics.com commented

HI,
Am looking same functionality in drupal 7, please explain in detail.