Please, explain private weblog?
I only want friends and family to signup to my private weblog. I thought I could control access by NOT selecting public weblog in my weblog preferences, but my tests showed I could not register at my weblog. Does "private" mean party of one? Does this means I would have to make my weblog public for my friends and family to signup and once they are all signed up go private?
Opening the site to the public defeats the whole purpose of having a private weblog in the first place. Is there another way? Is there some way for people to subscribe to the "private weblog" (subscription is optional when public) and once subscribed I can prevent further subscriptions?
TIA John
robert
how should antville figure out which user is a part of your family or a friend? to explain "private": it means that your weblog is only accessible for subscribers/contributors/content managers/admins. of course subscribing is deactivated in this state (otherwise everybody could subscribe to your weblog and have a look at it), so you have to *manually* add those that should have access to the "members" of your weblog (you'll find an option in the menu on the right if you're admin). They don't need to be contributors, just subscribing them is enough. But of course they have to register before that, currently antville doesn't have an "invitation" feature.
btw.: i just found out that the link "subscribe to this weblog" appears even if subscribing is disabled. i'll fix that.
JohnWalsh
When I set my weblog private, I assumed my family and friends could still register as the "register" link was still visible on the login screen. I also assumed that registering with a private weblog would automatically subscribe the registered user to my weblog, as subscribtion is optional on a public weblog. As, admin I would then control who can/cannot see my site content through these *forced* subscriptions. As this didn't happen in my testing, thats when I asked for an explanation about private weblogs.
If nobody can subscribe to a private weblog, then the new registrations link on the login screen should be removed in addition to "subscribe to this weblog" link as this only causes confusion. I actually removed "subscribe to this weblog" link in the loggedin skin as so many people were subscribing to the site when it was public and it was a chore to remove them via members.
Still, I think your idea of an "invitation" is the feature that best suits my needs so I look forward to seeing that in the future.
In the meantime, please confirm the only way for new members (not existing antvillers) to subscribe to a private weblog is to make the weblog public; accept subscriptions and then revert to private mode to control those subscriptions?
TIA
John
robert
whoever wants to have access to your private weblog can register anywhere on antville.org (eg. here), and after done so you can add them to the members of your weblog as i described above. or you switch the weblog public, let them register and close it again.
btw.: if your weblog is private and somebody is registering she *won't* become a subscriberof it, if the weblog is public she will automatically subscribe it too. but in any case she would be registering within the whole antville.org, not just within your weblog.
I understand that this might be confusing, let's see how we can solve that.
JohnWalsh
Robert,
Thanks for the explanation - I never realised registration meant automatic subscription. These suggestions might help simplify registration
In the user logged in skin have the membermgr.membership macro followed by membermgr.subscribelink macro. One of these macros will be displayed which will reduce the confusion and people will associate it as an either or situation. Having macros in between these macros only creates confusion. This is a small amendment to the default skin.
In the "login form" skin have a heading such as "Welcome to Antville Login" to distinguish between Antville and the weblog. List the benefits of registering with Antville similar to yahoo.com sign-in.
In the "register form" skin have a checkbox selected, with "subscribe to sitename.antville.org weblog". If the user does not want to subscribe they can unselect the checkbox. Similarily, if this checkbox/line is *not* present users know its a private weblog and/or they cannot subscribe.
BTW, if Antville allowed the creation of new weblogs, does registration via my weblog create a weblog for the user? If so then something similar to what I mentioned above should appear cos I know for sure my Dad wouldn't want his own weblog.
The key to this is listing the benefits for registering. It will reduce the confusion because I could never understand the benefit of subscribing to a site, other than surfing to a site via view subscriptions instead of typing the site address. I now know that in addition to the benefit of view subscriptions stating the last update of the site, there is also the benefit of continued access if the weblog goes private and the ability to edit a story if authorised by the author - you can't do any of these things if you are not subscribed.
Regards
John
P.s. Please confirm, that registration creates a weblog(if allowed)?
robert
registration does not automatically create a weblog. and thanks for your suggestions, i like the idea of the checkbox for being able to switch off subscription of a weblog when registering.