What we all know and love from typical blogging systems like MT or Wordpress just isn't there, so it has to be created!
History
Since I started using and implementing Drupal as a CMS and also on blog sites I wondered why there is no module to implement the profane comment follow up e-mail that I knew from Movable Type and Wordpress.
However, there are a lot of features in modules like "subscription" and "notify" - which both let you basically subscribe to content of ANY kind, which is a very generic feature.
None of the modules, hacks and tipp I ran across however offered everything ready-to-go for anonymous users as well - everyone required the user to be created prior to comment notification, which is a different approach ( "Make it easier to signup and only talk to those that take the extra minute to sign up")
The long waiting userbase
A lot of questions and requirements were posted, to list just a few
http://urlgreyhot.com/personal/weblog/anonymous_commenting_in_drupal_4_5...
no changees or updates since may
http://drupal.org/node/64920
=> answer: "just make signup easier" :-/
http://drupal.org/node/76711
=> answer: "use subscriptions module" - hey and the anons?
Both notify and subscription were created in 2003.
Nobody that was able to create a drupal mod obviously has since understood the
urgent need to drive one-time users that comment back to you site to convert them
to real registered users... this conversion step is one essential one in building a blog comment community.
Features
So today I am implementing "comment_notify" with the features
- to mail anonymous users about comment follow-ups
- to mail registered users about comment follow-ups
- to allow both by the click on ONE url to sign out of a specific post followup
- to allow registered users to preset their follow-up setting in their profile