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Privacy settings and subscription management

  1. heatherstark
    Member

    I would like to invite some non-wordpress users (friends and family) to view my private blog. And I want to make it super-easy for them, and for me. In other words - I want to send out an invite, have it accepted, and with no other steps on my part or on theirs, have members and subscribers.

    In particular, I don't want to have to bother my invitees back and forth for info about their user names. This is because I really want it to be as easy as possible for the people I want to invite (mostly family and all newbies). Any extra steps and they will not be able to do it as they will be too timid or they will forget.

    But as far as I can figure it out, there seems to be no integration between the invitation function, constributor role administration, and subscription management. Am I missing something here?

    The blog I need help with is heatherstark.wordpress.com.

  2. heatherstark
    Member

    Sorry that should have been 'contributor' up there rather than 'constributor'. -H

  3. raincoaster
    Member

    They HAVE to register for a WordPress.com account, and you have to Invite them using the same username or email they used to register. There isn't any workaround for this as far as I know, except to register them all yourself, which requires knowing all their email passwords.

  4. timethief
    Member

    I want to send out an invite, have it accepted, and with no other steps on my part or on theirs, have members and subscribers.

    Sorry but that's not possible. The process is set out here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/ and this is also relevant http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/ The people in question must register here at wordpress.com but they do not need to register a blog.

  5. heatherstark
    Member

    Thanks raincoaster & timethief - I didn't think it was possible based on my reading of the documentation, but I wondered if I had missed something. I am doing some tests at the moment as to what it looks like from the invitees side, and the enrolment form is very friendly. And once people accept their membership in your blog is automatically synched up to their username, which is a very nice touch well done wordpress. Thanks to this bit of elegance, I'm probably not going to lose all of my audience when they are asked to get a wordpress account, as I feared I would. But, looking at it from an invitees p.o.v., once you've enrolled, and you do your first login, what you get as your first taste of wordpress is...ta da... the admin page. Just the ticket, if you want to make a blog. But not so fab if, for example, you are 91 years old, and not very happy with computers in general, and all you want to is read your daughter's blog. I am looking for a way to do my blog that provides access control, yet delivers readers to my content pages easily. ( I could custom build it, yes, but life is short and if I wanted to devote time to custom build I wouldn't be on .com...;-) So I need to think about whether to abandon my requirement or somehow figure out a way to achieve it (maybe by having an open static home page and private blog pages....?) Ideas welcome!

  6. 1tess
    Moderator

    If you have a private blog, and you want to invite people to read it, then it is not necessary to make any of the invitees contributors (or any of the other user roles timethief outlined above).

    Your readers can be just readers, and when they log in, they will be sent directly to your blog, not to an admin panel.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/unlimited-private-users/

  7. 1tess
    Moderator

    This link might be a little more helpful:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

  8. heatherstark
    Member

    Thanks 1tess. I will test it out. ( I tried to go down the static home page route, as a fix. But in my theme, Vigilance, I get duplicate home pages in the header bar, and the work-around for duplicate home pages has some undesirable consequences which I haven't been able to control - namely the dummy 'parent' page of the home page gets 'current page' highlighting when you are on the home page. Sigh.)

  9. heatherstark
    Member

    There is no option to automatically 'add as reader', when emailing an invite to a non-user. You can only 'add as contributor'. And, just as happens to NewUsers who are invited with 'add as contributor' selected, after NewUser accepts her invitation, she get landed on a dashboard page on first login.

    What I want is to get my new users right away to the blog they signed up for, with no scary things happening to them (like landing on admin pages). But in any scenario that I've tested, that isn't what happens to them.

  10. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    Please read this more carefully:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

    You invite someone to sign up for a wp.com username. Once you know the username, you add it in the username box in dashboard sidebar > Settings > Privacy - (not in dashboard sidebar > Users). Then this user will be able to visit the blog (without a password), but won't be able to access your dashboard.

  11. heatherstark
    Member

    On the bright side, fyi: there seems to be a Vigilance-specific method of excluding pages from the header navigation if you are doing static home pages. So maybe public static home page, and private blog is the way forward after all. But that's another story.

  12. heatherstark
    Member

    Thanks panaghiotisadam. You are answering a slightly different question. The problem is not that they get to MY dashboard and can mess with it, on first login. The problem is that when you are a new user, what happens on first login is you land on your own dashboard, which isn't something that means anything to you. The scenario you mention will indeed work, if my NewUser doesn't run away screaming at the sight of a dashboard. (Downsides: NewUser will have to be organised enought to tell me their UserName, and I will have to be organised enought to manually administer their user rights.) ta.

  13. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    You're welcome.

    "when you are a new user, what happens on first login is you land on your own dashboard".

    When you've signed-up for a username only, I think you've got no dashboard.

    "NewUser will have to be organised enought to tell me their UserName, and I will have to be organised enought to manually administer their user rights."

    Re the first part, yes: as the previous volunteers explained, you can't avoid that. Re the second part, no: I repeat we're talking about adding "users" able to view a private blog, not users able to access any of its admin panels (Settings>Privacy, not Authors & Users).

  14. 1tess
    Moderator

    If your new invitee lands on a dashboard it means that they have signed up for a blog. Readers do not have to sign up for a blog. The only thing they must sign up for is an account at wordpress.

    Readers do not have access to your administrative page. No need to further administer any other rights to them.

    It's confusing:
    Wordpress calls co-bloggers (as timethief gave you the link about) users.
    Wordpress also calls readers invited to look at a private blog users.

    Panos and I both gave you links about how to invite the readers only type of users.

  15. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    The other solution is to set the blog to the middle privacy option and publish password-protected posts (perhaps all with the same password). Then you just send a link to the blog along with the password. Visitors will only have to type the password to read a post, and they won't have to be wp.com users.

  16. heatherstark
    Member

    I tested what happens when you are invited to become a user and blog-contributor, and you sign up as username only: when you click to activate your account, you first of all land on a dashboard. Even if you have said you don't want a blog, you land on your own admin panel, rather than on the blog you signed up for. Confusing for newbies.

    The other option for on-boarding, of using Setting>Privacy to add 'reader-users' is a pretty good one, if you want readers rather than contributors. Thanks for pointing it out.

    But before using it, you need your newbies to be users already. WP does not provide integrate invitation to WP with granting of 'reader' status, in the way it integrates invitation to WP with granting of 'user' status.

    And once you got people to jump that hoop, of becoming a WP user, then adding a new person as a 'contributor-user' is actually a bit friendlier for them than adding them as a 'reader-user'. Adding existing users as 'reader-users' via Settings>Privacy doesn't notify the invitee with the blog URL: adding existing users as 'contributor-users' via Users does.

    So: six of one. And...half a dozen of the other. ;-)

    Password option is useful alternative design. Thanks. But I will want people to subscribe, so I think I'll work on on-boarding membership in the easiest way possible....

    Thanks for your advice.

  17. heatherstark
    Member

    Just to clarify - re password option and subscriptions. I know you could in theory use both. But I'm just uneasy about the combination of subscriptions and passwords. With WP subscriptionsthe owner doesn't seem to be able to unsubscribe people. So I would feel unhappy about subscriptions in an environment where access control was enforced via a plaintext password that could potentially be forwarded or harvested.

  18. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    "With WP subscriptions the owner doesn't seem to be able to unsubscribe people."

    With Feedburner you can.

  19. kabdoo
    Member

    Heather,
    Thank you for raising this issue. I have exactly the same problem and have hit the same wall. Please let me know if you find a solution.

    Khaled
    http://kabdoo.com

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