Thread

The site I’m working on will potentially have a few different authors posting into one weblog. I’m not sure if the best way here is to create an account for them and let them log into the CP to create new entries or if a SAEF that posts into a weblog would be the best bet?

Anyone done this before and what way did you go with and why?

Hi Deron,

I’ve done this both ways on different projects and I think the question you have to ask is do you want the user seeing the back-end of your site?
With SAEF forms as well you can style them more easily to fit in with the look of your site and you can pretty much create admin style pages in this way. Looks a little nicer to the user and can also be made a lot easier to use.

If the user is quite adept at using admin CPs then I would say if you don’t object to them having the link then go that way as you don’t have to create anything new as it is all there for you.

Hope that helps? Sorry was in a bit of a rush with this one as work is quite busy at the moment.

Best wishes,

Mark

No problem Mark, thanks for the quick overview.

With a SAEF, that is something I create in my normal page templates, correct? So then, how do I block access to everyone except those that I want to be able to submit entries?

I don’t neccessarily need the SAEF to fit the rest of my design, I’m actually just thinking of creating a very basic html layout with the SAEF and my logo at the top and just letting them use that. It really doesn’t need to fit in with the rest of the design layout.

I also don’t mind to give them access to the CP, but I think that would require more training on my part. Of course, there is always the option to have them simply email the articles to me.

Also (sorry I keep thinking of things), I assume there is some way to allow the logged in user to select their name from a list as them being the author of the entry. Each entry will have a basic author bio info at the bottom of it, so I’ll probably use some conditional statements that specify if author == “” then show this bio info.

Hi Deron,

There are many different ways of blocking people from seeing the form. The easiest of which would be the use of Template Access Restrictions. Other ways would be the usage of conditionals such as :

{if member_group == "1"}
You are a Super Duper Admin!
{if:else}
I'm afraid you have a little more work to do before you gain Super Duper Admin status!!
{/if}

Other ways would be the use of custom plugins to handle what you need.

As to the author part. If you are using a SAEF then you can hard-code the author name in as you will know who they are due to them being logged in. That way they don’t have to select their name and perhaps choose the wrong one.

If they use the admin CP then as long as you have either their member group set up to enable them to have their username in the drop down author list or you specify that user specifically then they won’t need to do this, they should automatically be placed into the drop-down as the author of the post.

Admin-Members & Groups->Member Groups->Name Of Your Group - EDIT GROUP->Member Account Privileges
Include Members in PUBLISH page multi-author list?

Set that to yes in the group that you want to enable to publish and their username should automatically be entered. You can also do this on a user per user basis by going into :

Admin->Members & Groups->View Members->Member Name->Member Administration->Member Preferences

Hope that helps a bit?

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark. I believe I understand what you’re saying. I’m going to work on the gallery part of the site first and then move on to this part. 😊 I think I might be trying to do to much at once. 😉

Hi Deron,

No problems. We’ve all been there, I mean having too much to do at once and so little time to do it in!! 😉

Definitely can be a good idea at times to just take a step back and work on one thing at a time though.

Hope you get it all working the way you want in the end though, I’m sure you will.

Best wishes,

Mark