Extension:Newsletter

The Newsletter extension provides a catalog of newsletters, announcement of new issues of newsletters, and an easy way to subscribe/unsubscribe. This extension is under development, and we have a test instance at http://newsletter-test.wmflabs.org/

Requirements

 * Install Echo - Newsletter extension makes use of Echo notifications to notify subscribed users of new issues when announced by the newsletters.

Current functionality

 * Registered users can subscribe/unsubscribe to newsletters from the Special:Newsletters page - If you go to Special:SpecialPages, under the 'Other Pages' section there is a link titled 'Newsletters' which leads you to a page where you can subscribe/unsubscribe to various newsletters. On this page you can see a table which gives you an overview of all the newsletters in the wiki. You can subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletters just by checking the corresponding radio buttons. A subscribed user gets echo notifications from the newsletter when a new issue is announced.
 * Create newsletters - Special:NewsletterCreate is a special page that allows registered users to create newsletters. To create a newsletter, you are required to be prepared with a wiki page which will serve as you newsletter's main page and then there are other fields to fill out details of your new newsletter like name of the newsletter, frequency at which issues will be published etc.
 * Publishers and owners can announce issues - If you go to Special:NewsletterManage, under the 'Announce new issue' section you can announce new issues for your newsletters. Just like in 'Create Newsletters', you are required to be prepared with a page which will serve as you issue's main page. Notifications are send to subscribers when an issue is announced.
 * Add publishers - In Special:NewsletterManage, under the 'Add publishers' section, you can add new publishers( those who can announce issues ) for your newsletters. Only fields required are name of the newsletter and username of the publisher.
 * Remove publishers - In Special:NewsletterManage, a table can be seen which gives a detailed view of the newsletters with columns listing the contributors, permissions of the contributors and a column with a 'Remove' button to remove a publisher( Note: Only an owner of a newsletter can remove a publisher of his newsletter )

Wishlist
To be discussed. Sorted by priority, more or less. Developers needed!
 * Users can subscribe to a newsletter from any Wikimedia wiki ("global delivery").
 * Admins can decide when to enable/disable subscriptions.
 * Authors can draft and publish newsletters on-wiki in a structured way (own namespace? convention for subpages?).
 * Users can decide to receive notifications about new issues of a newsletter in the following forms:
 * via email: the full text (optional? plain text and HTML?).
 * via web (i.e. on their home wiki) as a tweet-like short-form notification (Echo integration), autogenerated or customizable by authors?
 * via web as the full text (ex.), or as a TOC linking to the full text (ex.) Integration with Flow?
 * Users can subscribe to channels/topics of the Wikimedia blog (ex.: Language engineering news, all tech blog posts, legal), either as short-form notification form (post title only?) or receiving the full post in HTML form. (probably via RSS integration)