How To Make "Send Author a Message" Show to Anonymous

The patch seems to contain tons of other changes, probably diffed against the wrong branch?

@Tushar In the future, if you make a patch for an issue, I think it is better to add the patch to the thread of that issue; that makes it easier for people to find. After you add the patch, you can edit the title information for the issue and change it to a bug report/feature request and set the status to "needs review." Those who start an issue are always happy to see a patch.

Any news on this issue/patch?
thanks

@pinkonomy It appears the patch is not passing the tests. It can't be committed until someone fixes it.

Apart from anonymous being able to sent a message,also on the message "Reply" function should be disabled,is this correct?

I haven't reviewed the patch, but since there is no way to respond to anonymous, there definitely should not be a reply form in that case..

#6: privatemsg-SendAuthorAMessage-1953310-7385016.patch queued for re-testing.

This thread is a life/project saver for me!! Thank you for working this issue. (Donate button?) Just one thing. I'm clueless with patches. I hate stating that because I see it on almost every "patch" thread and you coders have to be tired of seeing it. Sorry. Would anyone be willing to walk me through it? I followed some patch instruction before and really fouled things up, so now I'm plenty nervous. And just to verify this patch is for 7.x-2.x-dev?

Thank you,
Mark

For my patch question: I don't have a local environment. I work live. I've never used git or drush...fyi. I do have git on my computer, and if this is the preferred way to install patches then I will have to learn it. Please advise.

Recently, commits have not been made to Privatemsg very frequently so this is unlikely to get committed soon.

The official drupal.org instructions for applying patches are here:
https://drupal.org/patch/apply

If you're going to install patches, you really should learn at least the basics of git and you should never apply a patch directly to your live environment. I know it's quite a lot to learn for what seems like little return, but in the long run the investment will pay off in reduced frustration when trying to work around bugs.

Thank you for the quick response and for the link. It is quite a lot to learn! haha I just learned drupal. That is to say I've learned drupal well enough to make my site :) Fun but draining! I dread git but know I'll need it. I hope to hire a drupal expert soon! Anyway...

Thanks again, and for all your work with pm!

Curious, is there a way to subscribe to pm where, if I didn't find this thread, I could have been notified of this patch?

OK, looks like in my situation manual patch is my best option. Your patch seems small enough. Beginning backup...see you in about an hour with the result!

YES! Works perfectly!

So, obviously can't reply to anonymous messages. What about including an "optional" email field visible for anonymous role only? I'm trying to get workflow_field working but getting fatal error. At the very least it would be nice to have help text..

Anonymous user - please include your email if you want the author to reply.

I could probably hack in that statement, but would rather not. Thoughts?

@System Lord If you are logged in to drupal.org, you can manage your issue notifications for privatemsg here:

https://drupal.org/project/issues/subscribe-mail/privatemsg

Thank you!

Thank you for the patch. It would be great if this was added as a feature that we could turn on and off instead of having to patch the code.

Thanks for the patch.Question:Is this possible to add other fields in the form like email,name etc?

This is no more urgent than any other feature request

I need a way to remove/hide the "Block" action link for anonymous messages only. Right now using "Block" will prevent all messages from any anonymous user. I'm satisfied with my captcha and honeypot configurations for keeping bots at bay.

Maybe even add a "Limits" rule for anonymous or a generic, global (per user) flood control.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
SL

Giving the "mid" an anonymous class would work for anonymous messages(?) Then admins can do what they want using CSS.

What about adding "Anonymous" to the User Blocking Rules > "If the author has the role" column only?

I wonder if it's absolutely necessary to ever see message list prefix "Message regarding"? When you have many site using responsive theming to accommodate mobile devices, like me, these kinds of things are a nuisance (respectively) especially in regards to table width (also see: related issue where I have images to show). In the same respect appending "Anonymous" to the message subject line is a space hog and in this case redundant since there's a column for participants already. ( I think the "Anonymous" issue is part of this patch.)

I may have a solution that addresses anonymous blocking without messing with PM core or this patch and no custom module. The best way I know how to block certain specific anonymous users/visitors is by their IP address. Never 100% fool proof since another IP could be used by the cunning, but it'll work just as well as authenticated user blocking. There's a lot here, but ultimately the end user will have to take very little action to report an anonymous user. Here are my steps...

1. You'll need
   1. webform
   2. rules
   3. User IP Address
   4. Field Permissions
   5. URL Redirect
2. For webform components you'll want
   1. Description || (mandatory)
   2. Your email || E-mail || %useremail || (make private) (optional)
   3. Your visitor's message || Textfield || %server[HTTP_REFERER] || Disabled || (do NOT make private)
3. For PM add field type "User IP Address" and set field permissions to custom > Administrator only for everything. This way only the admin can view the IP.
4. Now you will need to create two new basic pages.
   1. One to redirect ALL "messages/block/0" to. See my image 4. Since all anonymous users are "0" this works perfectly and will not affect the Block link for authenticated users. Attach a webform to this page so that you can include components from item 2 above.
   2. The second page you need is a custom confirmation page for the webform above. I use custom to take my users completely away from the form so that they don't accidentally resubmit the same form because "%server[HTTP_REFERER]" will regenerate and enter the URL of the submission form page and lose the MID.
5. You'll need to create a rule to send Anon a confirmation email using para 2.2. above.

That's about it.

Now when admin receives the email/form submission they will have the MID in question to click on and in the message they will see the IP address of the anonymous user the authenticated user is wanting to block. From here admins can do whatever they need to do to resolve the issue. Monitor the IP on the site or just block the IP completely.

As for the user's experience...they would click on "Block" in the message enter their description/complaint, and send. Quick and easy!

The obvious down side is someone will have to monitor submissions and act. It can definitely be a full-time job, but IMO well worth it to be able to allow anonymous users to use PM. Maybe I, or someone, can improve on the process in time. Views integration will make this a lot easier, as well (wink).

Other things to consider:

1. If the user deletes the message before admin reviews it they wont get the message or IP of Anon.
2. I haven't figured out how to show the authenticated user that they have requested a block within a particular conversation. I'd like to have in the list tabel something like "Block - Pending".
3. Need a way to inform the user that they can delete the message/conversation with Anon now. Perhaps it can part of the Admin process to delete the message themselves when their action is complete(?)
4. Depending on how long activity logs are kept the Anon IP may or may not be available by the time Admin gets to the request.

Hi,

Great patch! but is there a way to make it possible to add conditional field of "email" in privatemsg if the user is anonymous ?
It would be great if the person msged by anonymous would be able to reply to them.

D7 is not yet outdated