When you hire me to create, re-purpose or optimise blog content for your business, you’ll find things a lot easier if I have access to your WordPress website. Of course, not everyone is comfortable allowing someone else to access their website. I’ve been in that position myself, and I can tell you I was nervous! The good news is that there are ways to give a professional or freelancer who is doing work for you limited or temporary access to your site. What level of access you give them will very much depend on what they need to do, but generally, I recommend that you create an Editor login on your WordPress website when you hire me for one of my done-for-you services.

What are the options available when giving someone access to your WordPress website?

In WordPress terms, an Administrator is someone who has full ownership of your website. Hopefully, this is the level of access that you, as the website owner, have. Giving the same access to someone else means that they could potentially delete entire pages, plugins, or even themes. When you’ve paid for a theme or plugins or simply spent weeks crafting the perfect About page, you definitely don’t want someone to interfere with your work, regardless of whether this was done intentionally (let’s hope not!) or accidentally (still quite bad for you). There is simply too much at stake, and you just don’t want to risk it!

Types of Users.

So unless you have a business partner, I wouldn’t recommend you make anyone else an Administrator of your website. And for security reasons, it’s good practice not to share your own personal login details with anyone else either. But if you’re paying a professional to do work for you, it makes sense to grant them enough access so they can do what you’re paying them for. In WordPress, users can be set up with the following roles:

• Administrator.
• Editor.
• Author.
• Contributor.
• Subscriber – although this is outside the scope of this blog post.

What can an Editor do?

An Editor can view, edit, publish or delete pages and posts. They can moderate comments; add, edit or delete tags and categories; manage links, and upload files and images. If you’re hiring me to create blog posts and optimise content for you, I’d recommend you set me up as an Editor. This means I have the ability to delete pages, for examples. And all I can say in order to reassure you here is that I have two websites of my own, and I have worked on several others for various clients over a number of years. Thankfully, I’ve never deleted a page by accident, and I most definitely intend for things to stay that way! Having access to the backend of your website is both an honour (a sign of trust, if you like) and a responsibility. And I take it very seriously.

I’d never want you to feel that your trust was misplaced, so I’ll say this. If you don’t trust me, and the idea of giving me access to your website does keep you up at night, don’t do it! While I cannot optimise your blog posts using the Yoast SEO plugin unless I have access to the backend of your website, I can still write for you. It just means that you then need to log into your website yourself and take care of the numerous tasks involved in crafting the perfect blog post. I can (and will, given the chance) take care of your categories and tags, make sure your Yoast SEO criteria are good to go and add any relevant links and images. But if you don’t feel comfortable sharing, we can work around this.

What can an Author do?

If you don’t feel entirely comfortable setting me up as an Editor, you could create an Author login instead. An author has the ability to edit, publish, and delete their own posts (including uploading images), but not yours. So if you have blog posts that you (or others) have written, an Author cannot interfere with that content. If you hire me to do your blogging (content creation or re-purposing from other media, like video or audio) Author access works just as well. It means I cannot amend your tags or categories, but unless you’ve asked me to optimise and maximise your existing content, in fairness, I don’t need access to those.

What can a Contributor do?

A Contributor can edit their own posts but cannot publish them. So if you set me up as a Contributor, I can create a blog post for you that goes straight to you, the Administrator, for review. This isn’t a bad thing, as I always ask my clients to check any content before publishing. While I’m fairly confident you’ll be happy the end result, I also want you to be satisfied with ‘the tone’ of the post. In other words, the content has to be right for you and your business. It has to be something you would write and align with your brand message and your ethos. So even when I do have the ability to publish the blog posts I write for you, I tend not to. I always ask my clients to check the content first and give me their go-ahead before pressing the Publish button.

The other downside to being a Contributor is that you cannot upload or edit images or media files. So if I’m writing a blog post for you, I cannot put the finishing touches into place. And you’ll need to add this on your own to-do list, which may not be ideal, especially if you’ve paid me to do this work for you! Once a post has been published, a Contributor loses their ‘rights’ to it and can no longer amend it.

How to create an editor login on your WordPress website

In order to create a new login for your writer, go to Users (on the left-hand side of your dashboard menu) and select Add New.

• Fill in the relevant information.
• Choose a password for your new user.
• Check the box ‘Send this password to the new user by email’.
• Select the role you want to give them via the drop-down menu (Administrator, Editor, etc.).

The user will then receive an email via the email address you entered with a link to set their own password. They will not be able to change the username you’ve assigned to them.

Editing an existing user.

If you want to change the level of access you’ve already provided to an existing user (for example, you want them to go from Contributor to Editor or vice-versa), you can do so by going to Users and then All Users. Check the box next to the avatar of the user that you want to amend and select ‘change role to’. You then select the new role click on ‘Change’.

Giving someone temporary access.

Another option you have when creating a new user is to give someone temporary access (i.e. for a limited period of time). This is great if, for example, you’ve asked a web designer or an SEO specialist to check or amend a particular feature of your website. Or even if you’ve asked me to write a one-off blog post for you with a clear deadline. In that particular case, you know I won’t require access to your website past that date, so instead of setting me up as a new User and then remembering to revoke access after I’ve finished the work, you can give me access to your website for a limited period of time.

In order to do that, you can use a plugin called Temporary Login Without Password, which allows you to create a self-expiring login via a one-off URL. With the plugin, you can set up the role and the expiry date for that user. Please note that I have not tested this plugin myself. Always be very careful with plugins. They make your life a lot easier and allow you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do on your own, but they also make your website code heavier and may clash with other plugins you have already installed. So if you intend to install and activate this particular plugin (because you need to give access to your website to several people at once, for example), make sure you do your own research and risk analysis in advance. Or ask an expert you can trust!

Are you a business owner who’s ready to outsource your writing to a professional? Check out my done-for-you services and if you like what you see, why not book a FREE 15-minute discovery call to discuss?