guest bloggers rock
WordStroker has officially opened its doors to guest bloggers! Aside from outlining my guidelines for submission; I quickly discovered that I had to determine which role to assign the writer. Frankly, this issue only came up when my first guest, Kiesha Easley of Weblogbetter was featured. I asked Kiesha to upload her post and provide a bio box, which she gladly agreed; however, she informed me that I first had to create her as a user.
If you are a newbie to WordPress like myself, then you are clueless about this, and as any searcher of truth – I turned to Google and began my search to accomplish this, which by the way is super simple.
Below, I will walk you through how to add a user to your WordPress account. But before I get to that, I have outlined the five different roles you can assign to your guest blogger.
- Administrator – someone with access to all administrative features.
- Editor – allowed to publish and manage posts and pages as well as other users’ posts.
- Author – can publish and manage their own posts.
- Contributor – can write and manage their posts but not publish them.
- Subscriber – can only manage their profile.
Once you have made your decision, it’s time to add the information. First, log into your account, locate “Users” on the left side panel.
Click “add new” – which I have highlighted in yellow below.
The page “Add New User” opens. Next, type the “Username” which is a required field. I type both the first and last name because it appears on the posts, and, frankly, I think it looks more professional.
Type the email address of your guest writer and make sure that they provide the email address to their Gravatar. This step is important because an email is sent directly to the guest writer with the login information needed to access your WordPress account.
The next two fields “first name” and “last name” appears again. Type the guest bloggers name again in the respective fields. I’m not sure if this makes a difference as I have not tested it, but I can say that it hasn’t affected the functionality of my writers by repeating this step.
Password is the next box, and as you can see it is required. Since you are the administrator you have complete control of your website and you assign the passwords, which can be change whenever you like. This provides me with a little more sense of security. Make sure that you check the box where it says “send password?” This grants the new user access to the account.
As you can see, this is a very simple process, but I thought it was important to highlight because if you are a newbie to WordPress and guest blogging, then it’s important to know how to navigate through this.
Was this helpful? Do you allow your writers to upload their own posts?
Article by Janet Thomson
Janet is a freelance writer, blogger, lover of words and online publicity protégé at WordStroker, a community enthusiastic about helping authors, speakers and the creative types maximize their online visibility. Connect with Janet on twitter @wordstroker the best place to make use of 140 characters.
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