9. Managing users and privacy
Meg’s PressGO! objectives
- To set the options on your blog for how you want other users to take participate on your blog.
- To apply the privacy settings you want on your blog.
Your PressGO! objectives
What are you hoping to learn from this module? Your objectives can be the same as mine, but is there anything else you are expecting to learn? Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!
Introduction
WordPress allows you to manage your users in a number of ways. It will even let you make your blog only visible to users you choose. In this module you will learn how to:
- Invite people to join WordPress so that you can add them to your blog
- Add users from the WordPress community
- Define the roles of users
- Set your privacy options
Focus questions: Managing privacy
What sorts of privacy functionality do you want from WordPress? Do you want your blog to be visible to the world, or only to a select few? What sorts of things do you want users to be able to do? Just make comments, or deal with the more admistrative aspects, too? Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!
Inviting people to join your blog
Before you can set roles for people on your blog (such as contributor, adminstrator, editor or author — see below), they must firstly be a member of the WordPress community. This means they must register with WordPress by signing up with a username and password. WordPress will automatically generate an invitation to potential users for you, once you fill in a few details.
Exercise: Invite someone to join WordPress
- Go to Users > Invites.
- In the ‘Send Invite To’ area, fill out your invitee’s details, as prompted.
- If you want to personalise the default message, do so in the ‘Personal Message’ box.
- Click ‘Send Invite’
Adding users and defining their roles
Users are people who have some kind of control over your blog and can be set to different levels. The levels of user are:
- Administrator: has complete control over all aspects of the blog. Only one person should be the administrator.
- Editor: can publish and manage posts, including other people’s posts.
- Author: can publish and manage their own posts only.
- Contributor: can write and manage their own posts, but not publish them
If a person is a member of the WordPress community, i.e., if they have an account with WordPress, they can be added to your blog in any role.
Exercise: Add a user
- Go to Users > Authors & Users.
- Navigate to ‘Add User From Community’.
- Fill out the ‘User E-mail’ box.
- Set their role on your blog.
- Click ‘Add User’
- If you don’t know a user’s email address, fill in the box next to ‘Search Users’ with some of the user’s details.
Setting your privacy options
The privacy options in WordPress default to ’show the world’. This means that your blog will automatically appear in search engines such as Google. You can change the settings so that only users you choose can view your blog, but this function is limited to only 35 users.
Exercise
- Go to Settings > Privacy.
- Under ‘Blog Visibility’ select the option you want.
- Don’t forget to save your changes
Reflection
Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!
- What have I learnt?
- What is still unclear?
- What do I need to follow up on?
- Where to from here?
- What other stuff I have read or accessed to help me make sense of it all?
