I think site registration is now working… We put together a friendly/welcoming site, invited a bunch of people… and nobody registered. Then we started getting emails from friends… “it won’t let me register!”
After tearing out a few more of my dwindling collection of hairs, I think site registration is now working for everyone. Had to create a plugin to fix it; tech details below!
For now, we’ve enabled comments even if you can’t register. Please tell us…
- Is registration working for you?
- Does the blog site look ok?
- Is anything hard to navigate?
- Do the private and/or public RSS feeds work?
Thanks!
Tech Details
This blog is built using WPmu – multiuser WordPress. There are settings that allow new user registration and even new blog creation. Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you is this: there’s no way to enable the setting that allows users to register themselves!
I’d love it if software designers put more effort into serving the needs of blog administrators, as well as you the blog readers. We’d call that a SLTy perspective: serving well.
Bottom line: a bit of web searching revealed the issue and the code I needed. Moments later, I had created a plugin that does what we need. It’s short and sweet:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: ICTA WPmu Registration Setup
Plugin URI: https://blogs.icta.net/plugins/
Description: Decipher users_can_register from WPmu registration setting
Version: 0.1
Author: Mr Pete
Author URI: https://blogs.icta.net/plugins/
*/
global $user_ID;
function wpmufrl() {
$registration = get_site_option('registration');
if ($registration == 'all' || $registration == 'user') {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
}
add_filter('option_users_can_register', 'wpmufrl');
?>
Yes, registration works.
When logging in, user names are case sensitive.
Loading the site for the first time was somewhat slow. The beta version of the Firefox Web Browser is supposed run Javascript faster. Or there is a download called Gears that might also speed things up when running Javascript.
How do I add a photo of myself to my comments?
Site loading should speed up soon. We have a plugin that did a good job of optimizing everything, but it is broken right now 🙁
Google Gears is available… if you go into your “admin” page it might show up as a link in the top right corner?
Photos — create a universal Gravatar icon here. Tell it the email address you’re using here and it will automagically work 🙂
Pete, as you know I have two email boxes: The public one is always STUFFED – and I look at it when I have nothing better to do. Your monthly letter properly belongs there.
The private mailbox gets my ‘immediate’ attention.
Does your registration permit (or ENCOURAGE!) the needed bifurcation of your ICTA mailings?
Have a great weekend!
Dad
That’s totally up to you. Right now you have registered both email addresses, and you have signed them both up to receive every kind of message we might send. Just modify your preferences in MailChimp (the link from any of the emails)
Yes, rego worked for me.
Looks like it’s working ok now. We’ll start posting “real” articles again.
And, now we’ll activate some features that enable this to be a trusted / trustworthy community:
1) From now on, most postings will require you to register/login to read the whole article and to join the comment discussion.
2) Our RSS feeds use the feedkey system — only those who have registered have full access to article feeds.
I was able to log in OK, after I had registered. I was surprised that my registration from the original icta.net page (which remembered me even after I had logged off) was not sufficient to get me into the blog site. I had to register separately for the blog. Is that intentional?
After I poke around your materials a little more, I have some tech questions related to my blog site that I am using for our workers around the globe to collaborate.
I am really impressed by your implementation of a philosophy of technology from a Biblical perspective. Thank you, and I look forward to interacting with you.
Roger,
Thanks for joining the conversation! We look forward to connecting with you too!
The separate registration is sadly necessary until we find a way to integrate the tools. Hopefully not long. We decided making other kinds of progress was more important for now.
We hope to have a forum up and running soon, which will allow people to introduce topics separate from the main blog article topics.
Isn’t it amazing how many bits and pieces need to be assembled and debugged, to achieve a usable and functional online community space!