Owning a content-filled website has its own plus effects. It builds reliability among the audience and serves as a great way to engage with them. But creating and publishing content consistently is a rigorous job.
This task is better performed when delegated to a person with limited power and necessary authority. This is where the role of the contributor comes in.
Contributors are designated to write content for the website. WordPress commonly provides this feature with plugins to give access to a person as a contributor with necessary roles.
Who is a contributor?
A contributor is a means of giving access to a person who wants to contribute to the content on a website and usually receives credit for the work in return. The credit can be in monetary form or simply displaying the contribution credit on the content for public view.
This helps in motivating the readers to even write on the website and create a brand for themselves.
There are many other roles above contributor on WordPress, some of them are:
- Administrator: Commonly known as admin, is the main user of the WordPress site. S/he has all the power to control the website as well as grant access to other users.
- Editor: Editor’s role is to handle the burden of the admin with similar powers as of admin. The editor cannot give access to other users.
- Author: The author is responsible for creating and publishing the content on the website. The role is restricted to their own posts.
These roles are seniors to the contributor in WordPress setup. The contributor’s role is similar to the author’s except the contributor cannot publish the content. The content submitted by the contributor is subjected to prior review by the author or the admin.
What is the role of a Contributor in WordPress?
Taking a reference from contributor’s power, WordPress restricts many features on the dashboard. Only a few are available, such as:
- Read other user’s posts
- Write comments on other’s posts
- Write, edit and delete their own posts
Once the post is submitted for review, it gets published on the website after approval. The review is done on some predefined criteria like quality, structure, plagiarism, and so on. After the content gets published, the contributor can edit it again and submit it for review. This ensures the reliability of the content under admin control.
How to give Contributor access to WordPress?
WordPress has the invite feature to give access to any user role. Admin can do so by typing email address/username. Then share the access credentials with the intended person. Here, are the steps to invite contributors to WordPress.
Step 1: Have a WordPress dashboard in front and hover the ‘User’ tab in the left panel. Click on ‘Add New’ to proceed further.
Step 2: A window will appear showing clear instructions on how to invite a person for any of the user’s roles. One of them is ‘Contributor’. Type the email of the person you intend to designate the contributor’s role. You can even invite multiple people simultaneously.
Step 3: After typing the email id and selecting the role, click the ‘Send invitation’ button.
Once the invite receiver input the assigned username and password, s/he can access the dashboard. Hence, all set to get on the work now!
Offering a contributor access to the website helps in engaging a large audience who wants to share their knowledge and thought on the subject concerned. This gives a boost to website traffic as well as helps in creating an active community of avid readers and writers.
