s2member as author?

I have a lot of readers who subscribe to the blog that contribute posts for the blog. I’d like to have them listed as authors but it seems this isn’t possible with ‘standard’ wordpress. I could use a role manager but don’t know whether doing so will clash with s2member (e.g. if I create a new role group that has the s2member roles for level3 and then the user downgrades to level 2, how will the users ‘group’ get downgraded? ).

Tim

Hi Tim.

if I create a new role group that has the s2member roles for level3 and then the user downgrades to level 2, how will the users ‘group’ get downgraded?

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by role group. s2Member has its roles, and those are the ones that will work for access to content.

If you give the user other roles, those roles would need to have the s2Member access capabilities to work for access management with s2Member.

I’m not sure that demotions on EOT will work normally with a role other than the expected s2Member Level roles, though. You could test it.

I’ll try to simplify… I want to list one of my subscribers as an author of a post… how do I do this?

Tim,

The question is, how are you determining who should be listed as the author of the post? If the user is actually the author of the post, then the WordPress get_the_author() function should do what you need.

If you’re using some other method to determine who should be listed as the author of a post (i.e., the user isn’t actually the author of the post, but you still want to list him there), then you’ll need to write your own code to figure that out and show the correct user.

I don’t really care how I make them the author but at the moment I just want to change their role to ‘author’ (either before or after they submit the post via email or through wp-admin) but that would mean removing their subscription role.

I’ll try to simplify… I want to list one of my subscribers as an author of a post… how do I do this?

If it’s just one subscriber, you could just change his role to Author. If you need to, you could edit the Author role to add the s2Member access capabilities for levels or custom capabilities. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-role-editor/

Yes but what happens when their subscription changes?

You mean if he stops paying and should be demoted? If it’s just one user, you could manage it manually, I guess. Otherwise, I’d look at how to make one of the s2Member roles behave like the Author one and just give it to that user.

The problem then is that everybody would have the author roles (if I use the existing s2member role) or I would have to manage a new role that wouldn’t be included in the promote/demote process.

It sounds like it’s not really possible if you want this to work without manually intervening in various steps. Has no-one else had an issue where they want to use different roles for subscribers before?

No, it wouldn’t be giving Author capabilities to everybody, because you’d do this with one of the s2Member Level roles that you didn’t give everybody, you’d only give to this person you want to author posts.

If everyone in your site has Level 1, then edit Level 2 to have the Author capabilities and give that role to this person. The rest of the users at Level 1 won’t be touched by this change.

And what would happen when their subscription ran out? i.e. how would it know to demote to a role that was still had author role capability?

Currently, demotion in s2Member will always change the role to s2Member Level 0 (WP’s Subscriber).

What do you want the demotion to do? Leave the access he had and only remove the Author capabilities?

no I need to keep the user as an author when they are demoted – i.e. the fact they are an author is completely separate from any subscription stuff..

I see, I understand now better what you’re trying to do.

You can give capabilities to a user directly, instead of a role. So you could edit this user to have the Author capabilities, independent of the role he has. The User Role Editor I linked to earlier lets you do this. After you activate the plugin, go to the Users list and when you hover the user, you’ll see a “capabilities” link. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-role-editor/

Brilliant :-) I haven’t used these custom roles before and didn’t want to inadvertantly break s2member!

Do your tests and see if it works as expected, but I’m pretty sure it will.

I’m glad we could find what seems to be a solution for you. :)