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1. scormeny
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I am working for a client who has a magazine-style website. The site publishes articles by about 30 authors, but these authors don't ever log in to submit their articles -- they are republished from a print magazine, and the web editor enters the articles.

   I feel like it would be great to have user management to do things like display an author page and an author avatar, so that people can find more articles by the same author. But it seems sort of silly to create "users" who never log in, and I don't want to expose the site to potential hackers by creating logins for these users that might be easily broken, etc.

   Do you have advice on either a plugin, or best practices, to manage a lot of authors who _don't_ log in to the site themselves?

   Thanks!

2. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I don't want to expose the site to potential hackers by creating logins for these users that might be easily broken

   So give each of those user accounts a difficult password--you don't even need to remember it.

   Seems much easier to just create the users (authors) and have done with it rather than coming up with another appoach. If you use the WordPress native user/author then accessing an author's posts via link presented with the template tag, wp_list_authors(), is supported by WordPress. Also you have the list of authors there to choose from when writing posts. No matter what you will need to create a list of authors, so just use the native user/author thing and just think, you won't have to bill your customer as much as you would going some other avenue ;)

   Related:
   Stepping Into Template Tags
   Stepping Into Templates
   Template Hierarchy
   Author Templates

3. scormeny
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   MichaelH, thanks for restating the obvious in a clear manner.

   If anybody else has thoughts on other user-management (or other-than-user-management) options, that don't involve merely restating what I've stated (and, further, slighting my professional billing practices), then I'd be most appreciative!

   I'm particularly interested in the user-management end, rather than the templating end, which I already understand, but it is helpful to see the links, thanks MichaelH.

4. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Apologies if I slighted your billing practices.

   Since you asked for advice, then please accept this for what it is worth...keep it simple. Just because you have 30 logins does not mean you are "exposing" a site to a break-in.

   I only see advantages to using the existing user system, but if you must, guess you could always use categories, tags, or custom fields, for your authors.

5. scormeny
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Anybody have any actual advice for me here? Honestly, MichaelH, I appreciate that this is "free" but I don't see why it's worth it to post a response that is not particularly responsive. A laundry list of other hierarchical attributes of the CMS does not make for advice and is not responsive.

   Thanks for the chance to sound off. I really feel like it's important for these forums to be valuable to serious wordpress users and developers, and I'd like to see better advice offered throughout the forums. Quantity and speed of offhand opinions offered, however well-meaning, don't add up to quality advice.

6. Mark / t31os
   Moderator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Ok, to add an alternate idea... :)

   How about finding a way to add an additional box to posts, in this box you type the author of the post... If one isn't entered, then use the current author (so whoever is logged in writing the post)..

   Or perhaps expand on that adding in a "virtual authors" section, and have the author box mentioned before become a drop-down box to select one of your "virtual authors" ....

   I can imagine it, but i'd be damned if i could write it...

   Just wanted to share an alternative approach...

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