Can I set up Confluence to let anonymous users sign up for email notifications when a page changes?

[Denise Spahn]

I'd like to set up Confluence to let anonymous users sign up for email notifications when a page changes. I'd like to avoid using RSS. Any suggestions?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Jamie has spot on - unless the user logs in, Confluence cannot possibly know who they are. You're asking it to know someone's email address without knowing who they are, which is quite simply not possible.

My guess is that you want to get them to watch a page and then provide an email address, without having to log in? That probably could be done with some coding, but you'll quickly find that just tagging a user's email address on is fraught with problems and you need a system that, well, um, handles user/passwords. (And under no circumstances could you put a system without authentication on the internet - the spam would kill it in a few hours)

[Denise Spahn]

I see what you are saying. Using the anonymous access is less about the user staying anonymous and more about avoiding additional maintenance time for yet another set of user/passwords. Does that make sense?

[JamieA]

I guess you're aware of the implicit contradiction in your question? I mean, if they provide their email address they're not anonymous, but how can they receive emails otherwise?