Multiple users with the same e-mail address?

You could use a membership plugin, but … what are you worried about giving them access to? You can give them access to just write posts.

I don’t want them to be able to do that, or access the interworkings of the system at all. And some of them wouldn’t give me an e-mail address anyway. I cover NM politics, and some of the guest columns are from elected officials and others like that.

What sort of membership plugin?

Now that you say all that, I don’t think there’s a membership plugin that would help. You want blog submissions that show up as ‘written by’ other people.

Perhaps a better route would be a custom field for ‘Guest Author’ and then you post everything as you, but the front end shows ‘Written by <guest author>’ instead?

Un-check the box “send password” then just put in a junk email address.

Just registered a new user that way – seems to be no check on the email as long as you don’t send the password.

Hmm… ipstenu, I could do that, but then I lose the ability to click on the name and show all their posts, and WP to Twitter won’t include the author name in tweets… I wish there was a better solution to this than what you’re suggesting, saildude, but it sounds like that might be the way to go.

I wish there were a way to get rid of the requirement that a new user enter an e-mail address — but only for administrators.

I entered the test user above as Admin – since it sounds like you know who most if not all of your contributors are you can add them yourself as Admin then email or call them with the log-in info.

Sort of awkward but gives you the sorting you want and with a junk email address that will never be used to my thinking not much of an issue since you can just make up anything for the email.

Good luck with your sunshine project.

Are these users ever logging in anyway?

I’m sure there’s a way to code a fake ‘author’ page using the custom fields but I’m blanking on it right now.

Thanks.