Since the launch of the Tavern, one of the ideas I had in mind for this place was to build up an audience but also, to share the stage with whomever wanted to share it with me. So far, I’ve accepted guest posts from a couple of individuals and I am grateful for those who have submitted any posts considering they are some of the most popular pieces of content on this site. While emailing the HTML is fine for getting your post to me, a better solution would be to provide access to my write panel without actually getting access to it.
Thanks to Michael Torbert who is the author of the All In One SEO Pack plugin, I now have a guest post submission form that when a post is accepted, shows up in my write panel as a draft. I also receive an email notification that contains certain fields from the form so I can tell via email if it’s a legitimate, or fake attempt. This post submission form was custom made for WPTavern but there is a small chance that Michael may make this a public plugin.
As it stands, the submission box is using something similar to the visual editor you would find in the WordPress write panel. At some point in the future, I believe we will try to replace this editor with something similar to the one found in the Comment Quicktags plugin. I know most of you are not keen on using the visual editor but if you so desire, just use your own write panel to write the post and when you’re finished, copy and paste it into my submission editor, check the right category and send it off. Unfortunately, you can’t upload images using this editor. For now, just send your images to me via email and make sure to place a bit of text within your post that matches with the image name so I know where to put it. Also, I’ll be adding the custom Guest Post Author box which I use on every guest post to place more emphasis on the author.
Right now, I’d love it if anyone with knowledge of WPMU, bbPress, or BuddyPress would step up to the plate and share a bit of their knowledge with the Tavern audience. Unlike most other WordPress centric sites which sometimes have a focused usergroup, the audience around the tavern is made up of theme authors, plugin authors and typical end users giving you a variety of options to explain a topic.
If you encounter any bugs or mishaps with the submission form, contact me via email or through the forum and we’ll get them sorted out.
So, is there any reason not to use the built-in WordPress user roles, and let guest posters register as “contributor” (etc.) and draft posts from your WP back-end?
I’m wondering if there is some security issue or something that is preventing you from using WordPress’ built-in functionality?
We use WP as a full-fledged CMS for a daily news website (click my name to see it). We get several dozen contributions a day from the community to go along with the news that we write.
I’d be grateful for an application or plugin that allowed outside users to submit information without allowing them access to the admin area.
I know you can restrict users by role (we use the Role Manager plugin) but I’d rather not give anyone access to the admin, even a stripped down version of it. Bad things can happen.
This plugin is a good start for my needs and I’d be willing to invest to get the plugin to the next level. We require photo handling, for instance. I’d also think the write window should support making links, since links are the whole point of the internet.
The plugin is a tremendous start, however, and I’d be happy to be contacted about being part of its development.
@Chip Bennett – I actually don’t want to deal with any more registered users on the site. Also, those people would need to become dedicated writers if I were to go though the trouble of adding them as a contributor. I’d rather have a system that I didn’t have to worry about user permissions anyways.
@Dave Bullard – There is a plugin that will be released some time in the future that will enable you to easily have a post submission form on your site but I have no idea when it will be released. Maybe this will encourage Michael to rework the plugin into something more people can use.