How to Control Your Users in WordPress

If you're concerned about how to label your users in your WordPress blog, never fear. Linda defines those roles so that you don't allow strangers total access and deny friends the same access.

Altering the Discussion

When you go to "Settings > Discussion" in your dashboard, you'll see a number of radio boxes that you can tick and untick to help control the discussion on your blog:

These are the controls I use for one of my blogs, one where no one can register, but where I allow anyone to post a comment on a post.

• Default Article Settings: These allowances can change for each individual post. Basically, I want to attempt to notify any blogs linked to from my article (and, no – this does not slow down posting in any perceptible manner); I also want to allow link notifications from other blogs, or pingbacks and trackbacks; I also want to allow people to post comments on ANY articles, but especially new ones.

• Other Comment Settings: When a person comes to this blog and wants to comment, that person must fill out a name and email address. This barrier discourages spambots and robots. Users do not need to be registered nor logged in to comment, especially since I've cut off that option in this site.

• E-mail me whenever: Before that person's comment shows up on my site, I want to read it. While I usually allow most comments, some people still don't get it – they want to include personal questions that should go through email, not through a public comments, or they add their addresses and phone numbers or emails to their comments, opening them up to all types of trouble. I am kind to strangers (and to friends). I want to view their comments if only for that reason, so I can help protect them from themselves.

• Before a comment appears: To reinforce the fact that I want notification, I also want to approve the comment, as noted above. Ticking that one box is enough – no need to tick the "Comment author must have a previously approved comment," unless you have a registered user that is free to comment after his/her first comment approval.

Creating a Blogzine with User Capabilities

Say that you and a group of friends want to create a Blogzine, and each of you have committed to contribution of a number of articles to this project over a period of time. In this case, one or two of you can handle the role of the Admin and/or Editor, while others can take on the roles of "Author."

If you are registering your users (and even if you are allowing users to register themselves), it is a good idea to register your "upper echelon" yourself. This way, you can make sure that the person in question is being labelled with the correct role. I've had a few authors who registered as Editors, thinking they were quite better than the authors. At that point, I knew it was time to take the reigns on anyone other than the Subscriber level.

If you'll note above in the illustration, you can register the new author and tick the box to send the information to that author. The author, then, has permissions to enter the site, to set up a profile and to post blog entries. He or she also has the capability to change his or her password, but you have the authority to change that password again to block the author from entering the site, if it ever comes down to that.

You also have the option to delete a user, but beware – when you delete a user, often his or her material goes with that person. In other words, WP may delete everything about that person, including the posts that he or she wrote. Changing the password is much easier, and it effectively blocks the author. That said, you also can attribute a user's posts to another person when you try to eliminate the former user. This is the alternative to eliminating the baby with his or her bathwater.

Finally, when you have a list of authors, you can select to produce a page that shows your authors.  Go to "Pages > Add New" and select the template for that page:

When you click on that template, WP automatically pulls all your authors together into one page, and changes as your authors change. That is one piece of work that is done, easily, and without much effort. Bravo.