Add mechanism to notify submitters when a site has been published

[ndiego]

When a user submits a site, they a greeted with the following message.

Currently, there is no mechanism that would automatically inform the user if and when their submission is published to the Showcase.

One idea would be to use a system similar to the Photo Directory, where the user is sent an automated example. Here's an example:

It would be great to explore how this could be done and the development work that would be required.

[ryelle]

Just sharing some thoughts— We likely wouldn't be able to use the same exact Photo Directory work for triggering this, I believe that uses a custom form so they're already handling the submission manually (as in, custom code).

We should be able to hook into the Jetpack Contact Form submission though, if we want to send a "thanks for your submission" email. That wouldn't be connected to "approved" though.

Currently, publishing sites is totally disconnected from the submission process. A human needs to manually copy over the data. So there's no connection to the submitter. To fix that, we'll need a meta box (or two) for email/wporg username on the posts (sites), so that we know who to notify.

How to populate that could introduce a little more automation into the process…

1. No change: The human entering the site copies all info from the submission, including the user info, and when it's published, we can trigger the email.
2. Fully automate the submission -> site. This could look very similar to WordCamp's speaker submissions. The human reviewer would only need to review & edit, no manual copy-paste. Data mapping can be tricky due to how Jetpack names things, so any change to the form labels could impact the automation. This would also generate a lot of drafts on the site. The user info would be automatically included, so when it's published, trigger the email.

There was also a suggestion to add the published site as activity on the submitter's wporg profile.