I have been putting the finishing touches on some changes to how users of the website (not the email groups) are authenticated and gain permission to publish on the site. While I love a good Wild West movie, it’s not philosophy for creating a content based community online. We locked down permissions with some slight technical changes a few weeks ago, but due to a lack of time and understanding we had to make the site too fortified.
Now, that has changed. We now have three settings – anonymous (those who just come to the site and look around), authenticated (they have joined the site and are waiting for me to grant them access) and trusted user. Anonymous – you keep on looking and clicking on those sponsor ads. Please start with the Plat sponsors and move downward. :) Trusted Users – assuming I did the change correctly you should see no change Brand new to the site – Once I determine you’re human, not trying to promote Viagra and you actually want to be a blogger on the site (only thing we have right now but that’ll change soon enough)I’ll authenticate your login. At that point, you can make entries until your heart’s content.
However, when you hit publish our new work flow sends the posts to us for moderation. We’ll review it, reserve the right to make tiny edits if the thing is almost ready for prime time and publish it. Or, we can ask you to make some edits before publishing. Or, like a good bar tender in one of those Western Saloons, we can throw the post completely out [for the record that will only occur if it’s SPAM]. As of now, we’re making changes both internally and externally to the site. Next on my internal list is installing a decent WYSIWYG editor and trying to figure out the dark art of getting MS Liver Writer to work. al
