How to Give Your Designer Live Access to Your Theme
As you have probably noticed by now, I have a new theme that has been kindly provided for me by Jack of Design Farmer. There were a few technical issues upon launch and Jack asked if there was a way to access my theme live so he could fix them. Here is how I gave him access to my theme without compromising my blog security.
WordPress Users
Until yesterday I had only ever setup a single user for my blog – me, the administrator and of course that user has access to everything. I can edit the posts, manage users and edit all the technical details such as plugins and themes.
WordPress allows you to setup different users with their own username and password. I’ve always thought of this as a way of having multiple authors on a blog but it occurred to me that I could use the functionality to give Jack his own login which had access to the theme but without being able to edit the posts (not that I thought he would but that’s not the point – it’s a useful exercise!)
WordPress 2.0 Roles & Capabilities
WordPress 2.0 allows you to specify a role within your blog, such as the Administrator Role or a Subscriber Role. Each role is simply a collection of capabilities such as the ability to publish a post, edit an exiting post, switch themes and so on. This functionality is documented on the WordPress website.
However, it is not easily accessible. I had to install a plugin in order to access this functionality. I used the Role Manager Plugin to allow me to do what I wanted.
Using the Role Manager Plugin
As soon as you install the plugin you will have a bunch of additional options available to you underneath the users tab:
Clicking on the ‘Roles’ tab will bring up this new screen that allows you to edit existing roles and create new ones:
This was the first approach that I tried. I created a ‘Designer’ role and gave it the permissions that I wanted and then set Jack’s user to the Designer role but that didn’t work – when I tried to login as Jack it didn’t give him permission to access the dashboard. I’m not sure why, must have been something I did wrong.
However, there is another method and as I only needed to create one user, this is what I did. When you edit a user, in addition to assigning a role you can manually assign extra capabilities and this is what I did in the end. I left Jack in the default Subscriber role but I added the ability for him to edit and switch themes as you can see from the screen shot below:
When Jack logs in, he has a very limited Dashboard which allows him access to the Presentation tab where he can make all the edits he needs to my theme. Isn’t that cool?
Additional Uses for Roles & Capabilities
Traditionally, blogs are often a one-person affair but more commonly blogs are being run by multiple people with many authors and some are even evolving into communities rather than just one-way conversations. I even know of a paid membership site (The Immediate Edge) which is entirely powered by WordPress and I imagine the users are managed in this way.
There are many people who like to write but aren’t particularly tech-savvy and for those people, the default WordPress Dashboard may be a little overwhelming. By creating specific logins for those people that has only the access they need, it has the side effect of introducing simplicity.
I’d be interested to hear your opinions and experiences of how this functionality can and is being used on WordPress blogs.
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This is really helpful. I do a lot of WordPress setup and customization and this is also a good way to let some of my clients have access without opening up everything to them. Thanks!
[...] MiddleBrook reviews the Role Manager plugin for Wordpress, where she discusses how to make proper use of [...]
Nice article, I didn’t need this yet as I designed my theme myself, but it’s good to know this is possible.
Another plugin that I found helpful when tweaking my theme, was the Admin Theme Preview plugin. It allows you to edit and preview your theme, when it’s not live yet. It prevented my blog from some nasty typos and mistakes :)
1. Dearly Beloved Caroline:
2. This is just another information of a kind which I personally do not know about before.
3. It will always remain a learning process on your blog and there is so much you know that can bless lives.
4. Keep up the great and good work and thank you for sharing this because I am installing it already on my WP blogs!
5. Remain blessed and a blessing.
6. Talk soon by God’s grace.
7. Regards, –OSF.
Hi Caroline,
The new look is so you! (giggle)
I like the way it blends in with your picture.
The best part of this is the networking you and twitter and the designer participated in. That’s what it’s all about!
Here is a wacky use for permissions: bmail.
As in, “blogmail”. I looked all over and didn’t see one person working on it. So I cajoled a couple of my ‘net buddies to try an experiment. Each of us had admin rights on a test WordPress blog. Then we posted letters and subscribed to feeds for posts and comments. Because of RSS, each of us received the letter. When one of us commented, we would be notified.
The idea is that you create a blog, give it a non-SEO type domain name, make it as private as possible, turn off bots, password protect the directory and you’ve got your own little message system.
Add Askimet, just in case the spambots detect your craftily named xBkajTM17b.com
The experiment uncovered some obvious usability issues, but as far as ideas go…
Happy New Year!
Mitch
Thanks for sharing the plugin Caroline, I never knew about it. I think it can have many applications. For example, you can hire someone to delete and sort the spam comments you get every week. Also, you can allow any blog visitor to write a guest post. You can also hire someone to look after the comments if you’re gone for a holiday. Likewise, you can set someone the role of “Editor” (with a few more privileges) to look after your blog when you’re taking a break etc etc…
Do make sure you don’t give the privileges to the wrong person…
-Mike
[...] How to Give Your Designer Live Access to Your Theme from CarolineMiddlebrook [...]
Hi Caroline,
Love the new layout of your blog. I’ve also been looking at changing the theme of a few of my blogs. Really interested in the 3 column layouts.
Yet again another detailed & informative post….Giving your designer access to your theme. Does this work with wordpress.org and wordpress.com (which I use thru my control panel and fantastico?)
Great to see you’ve started to sell advertising space & working towards your goal of making a living online.
First:
Did you realize, that the last topic of your recent topic list vanishes the div under/beneath/below (lacking the right word) it?
Second:
Did you realize that the arrows pointing to your recent topics have an odd position if your header exceeds one line?
greetz
Jacky ;)
Third:
your homepage:
http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/
Still points to that old-design page … maybe you want to install a movedpermanently??
Hi Caroline,
Thank you for posting information about Role Manager Plugin.
I have role manager installed on my blog and I would like to ask you a question about configuration please.
I am trying to configure new site visitors who have registered with the ability to log in from the homepage and once they are logged in they will see their Username, Write a Post, and Manage a Post hyperlinks.
Of course, I want to limit the backend exposure that the new user can see enabling them with the functionality to originate (Write a post & Manage a post) when logged in with their profile.
Thank you in advance for your assistance and guidance.
David
Davids last blog post..Leadership & Energy Independence
@David, I have only used the plugin one time to do as I described in this post which was many months ago. I really don’t know the answer to your question, I suggest you contact the plugin author.
This role manager thing is quite interesting. I haven’t tried them before. I also created just the admin role after last time I did try author role once. On that time I got the problem that it didn’t allow me to put on to my post. I spent time going back and forth trying to put with the link to my post and never got it.
Thank you again for a good tip.
:)
charless last blog post..The West Wing – The Complete Series Collection (2006)