Multiple Users

[mathewcsims]

Hi,
Is there any way to have multiple users editing one blog? Not simultaneously, but able to post to the same blog.
Cheers,
Mat

[matt]

Hey, there isn’t a way to do this at the moment, unfortunately. Right now, if someone wants to host multiple authors on a blog, they’ll usually just share their login information. But this is something we’ve been wanting to support.

If you don’t mind, I have a few questions (open to anyone) that’ll help us design this:

• Do you need different roles (e.g. author / editor / proofer)? Or to just be able to let multiple people post directly to a blog?
• Do you need to restrict permissions in any way (e.g. publish-only, no editing or deleting)?
• Do you want author information shown on individual posts?
  • If so, what kind of information would you want included (e.g. avatar, name, bio)?

[mathewcsims]

Hey Matt,
Okay, didn’t think there was but at least now I know it wasn’t just me failing to do something simple!
In an ideal world, an ‘author’ permission role would be ideal, where someone could have a login that would let them write posts that would then be subject to admin approval before publishing.
For me personally, the ability to display author information on posts isn’t really necessary, but I would put it in the ‘nice to have’ pile. Certainly, just a by-line would be sufficient for me.
I do love write.as, for both it’s simplicity and flexibility, things like this would be added bonuses that I’d be happy to pay a $/£/€ or two on top of my Pro subscription for.
Cheers,
Mat

[BigWitchEnergy]

Just want to throw my support behind this feature as well!

Similar to, @mathewcsims, an “author” role would suffice for my needs right now. Just a way for other people to have their own separate login where they can write posts for my blogs (option to have them be able to post with or without approval) and without them being able to futz with the blog configuration/settings.

[cjeller1592]

These are great suggestions @mathewcsims and @BigWitchEnergy! Would you want multiple users to post to a Write.as blog or one hosted by yourself through WriteFreely?

This feature has interested me as well. I have toying around with the idea for a simple application that would allow someone to post to my Write.as blog. All they would need to do is create an anonymous Write.as post, put the post id in the form, and click submit. The post would then be published on my Write.as blog.

Would something like that possibly work until an official solution?

[yungleary]

Hi!

Is this still in the works? I’m interested in starting up a blog with multiple users, a community of sorts writing on similar topics. Is this possible? Will it be possible?

[cjeller1592]

Hi @yungleary! Yep it is still in the works! Do you (or anyone else) have any answers to @matt’s above questions? More feedback in that regard will help clarify things as we move the design for this forward.

@matt

• Do you need different roles (e.g. author / editor / proofer)? Or to just be able to let multiple people post directly to a blog?
• Do you need to restrict permissions in any way (e.g. publish-only, no editing or deleting)?
• Do you want author information shown on individual posts?
• If so, what kind of information would you want included (e.g. avatar, name, bio)?

[yungleary]

• I would want different roles (author and editor)
• I would want to restrict permissions (no publish, no editing, editing)
• Yes would definitely want author info shown on individual posts
• Hmm, not sure, I’ll think about it.

I’m picturing a blog in which the pinned posts are actual links to the different authors posts, if that makes sense, and the main page is a feed of everyone’s posts.

[matt]

Thanks for your input, everyone! We ended up developing this, and are preparing to slowly roll it out in the next month or so.

We designed this with the full suite in mind, so multiple people can review submissions on Submit.as, multiple writers can publish on Write.as, or you can combine the two, depending on your needs.

There’s one more thing I’d like to know: how many people will each of you need to collaborate with?

[umhi]

So happy to see that this is in development! Thanks for continuing to make this platform as versatile and human-friendly as possible, @matt! My partner and I actually just started a collaborative blog together here and have added little ‘avatars’ to indicate which of us is authoring a particular post. Our system works well for our needs, but it would definitely be nice if we could log in through two separate accounts. Another tricky issue that we’ve run into is when we’re co-editing a post, trying not to save over each other – not sure how complicated it would be to do something about this, and it’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but might be worth considering for this feature if you aren’t already!

[airm]

Thanks for developing this, I think that it will be a great addition. I also run a blog between two people and it can be sometimes hard to have a clear way of following one author or the other. It could also be a great incentive for people to go Pro ! To answer some previous questions, it would be great to have different permissions (Something like customise/validate/create/edit/delete) as it would maybe be easier than to define roles. And for us showing or names would be enough.

[matt]

Great input, @umhi and @airm – thanks!

We’re now putting the final touches on this, and should have collaborative blogs ready for everyone within a week! As it seemed like a permission system was pretty important to everyone, we’re going to launch with a few team-level roles to choose from:

• Admin – Has full access to the team and all shared blogs.
• Editor – Can see every team member, and has full access to all shared blogs.
• Author – Can see every team member, and only publish and manage their own posts across all shared blogs.

You can watch this demo of the role system in action, and we’d love to hear any feedback or questions you have. Otherwise, I’ll update everyone when this is ready to try out!

[umhi]

Awesome! This looks really great, @matt! Thanks so much for putting in the time to bring this feature to life :^)

[matt]

Glad you think so, @umhi!

This is now live for everyone! You can get started here, and read more in our latest announcement:

New: Collaborative Blogs

Hey everyone! I’m excited to announce that collaborative blogs are now available on Write.as This comes as part of the team collaboration features we’ve been working on for a while now, that’s only been available to Submit.as users so far. Now, anyone can start a team and collaborate across products that support it – today, just Write.as and Submit.as. While logged in, you can get started here. A subscription comes with a free 14-day trial, then costs $35/month when billed annually. It…

[18percentgrey]

@cjeller1592 / @matt / anyone who knows…
How do I remove someone from my team? We have parted ways and I don’t want them to have any access to my account unless it’s as a reader, not on my team.

Thanks! There seems not a button for this.

[matt]

Hey @18percentgrey, it’s true we haven’t added a button for this yet! Just let us know their name (as it shows up on your team) in a message to @support, and we can manually remove them for now.

[18percentgrey]

Sorry for being such a trogdolite, like this? @old-support - please remove : the only other person on my team that isn’t me: omar@uncoil.org - there are only two there. It is “Asha” that needs be removed.

Thanks! (A Sometimes squeaky wheel.)

[matt]

Ah, sorry for not being more clear. By “send us a message,” I meant for you to click on that @old-support link and then press the “Message” button to send us a private message. But no worries! I’ve just removed them from your team. Please let me know if anything looks off.

(I’ll redact some of the private information in your post, just so it isn’t being shared publicly here.)

[18percentgrey]

@matt Gotcha thank you ! Yeah that was bothering me that I couldn’t figure it out and my brain was partially attached most of the day (was getting over some stuffy nose things.). Thanks for being the more alert of the two of us haha! much appreciated, I am usually pretty sharp.