Section 5.6. Adding a New Author

Movable Type allows multiple authors to post to the same blog. This is often called a team blog, and it is very easy to set up in Movable Type.

First, go to the Main Menu by clicking on the Menu link in the top navigation. Click on Add/Edit Blog Authors. This screen (Figure 5-25) allows you to add new authors to your blog and to modify the permissions of existing authors. Movable Type uses a task-based permissions system to allow, as well as to deny, author access to certain aspects of administration. As the administrator of your blog, you can choose how much access you wish to give to a user: whether the user can post to the blog, can edit the templates for the blog, can edit the configuration, and so on.

Figure 5-25. Add/edit blog authors

To add an author, scroll down to the Add an Author section and fill in the form. You will need to assign a username and password to the new user. Then, from the list of blogs on the right, allow the user access to a blog by checking the checkbox next to the blog name.

Click Save to create the new author; once you have done this, the new author will be activated and will be able to log in to the system to post to the blog.

By default, new authors are given posting permissions only; in the permission-editing screen (Figure 5-26), you can modify these permissions if you wish to.

Figure 5-26. Editing permissions

Movable Type allows you to set permissions for most tasks supported by the application. For example, if you trust a certain author, you could give that author the permission to edit all posts. If you distrust the design sense of one of your authors, you might not want to give that author permission to edit the site templates.