Register to comment, not to post

I find it hard to imagine that no one else would like to see a special class of users purely for the purposes of commenting, and having no access to the wp-admin.

Seems like the ideal coe communitiny building, membership, and spam protection.

go figure.

Not convinced it is the ideal anti-spam thingy. The automatic scripts don’t really care about your register/login requirements: they go directly to the files.
Zero level (or whatever is the lowest) registered users can’t do anything in the wp-admin, except updating their own profile. And you can find topics around here that could help you to elimiinate even that: by using a redirect to the main blog page after logging in, instead of going to the admin.

I think it’s pretty fair to let them enter the admin so they can change their password. They can’t do much else in there if they’re the lowest user level by default. Doesn’t that meet your needs dss?

why does it matter if they go to admin or not? at level 0, all they can do is change their personal information and comment.

I think it’s really a matter of wanting some separation.

A method of requiring loginin/registration to comment
[though it’s true, having the ability to change your password is important]
and a manual promotion to allow access to even see that there is a wp-admin area open WP up for further and future use as cms, magazine and group type sites.

I’ve been thinking outside the blog a lot lately and looking at CMS applications and kinda tasting the mayonaise. Just not into them. WordPress can do everything I want to do, until I need the users to register (for legal, privacy or preference reasons) and then I feel that showing the back end, in any way, to stangers, outsiders, people who are customers, or just participants is in some way degrading to the integrity of a site.

So I still think that a different approach to level 0 registration/ login purely for the purposes of commenting should not allow any access to the wp-admin area, or only allow a visible profile page, and nothing else.

I wonder if it’s possible to show different content (menu and page data) based on user level:

if user_level(0); {
get_header
get_footer
}

elseif user_level(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10); {
display wp-admin pages
}

something like that?

Well, ok. Don’t reveal it’s wordpress then.

After thinking about it, it’s probably easiest if you you could completely unbrand wp by modifying the various pages so they look different, and have no wp markings. At least unbrand the login page. After login, I think there might be a plugin to send the user back to the main blog instead of the admin area. It might even be user level dependent. Look for that. (just a vague memory of mine. hope it’s not a dream!)

I understand why you want this, and it’s not a bad idea to have this as an option, either through a plugin, or to build it right into wordpress.

Anything new here?

I also have a need to keep registered users login without seeing the dashboard – it would confuse the heck out of most of my folks.