Guest mode for Anspress 4.x
In the best case scenario everybody should register and be active part of growing community. It is just better for a q&a owner, but we all know, that the world does not work like that.
First of all anonymous user is just wrong name, it has a negative ring to it and nothing to do with anonymity. It is more like Guest posting, without all that registration crap. That way You can add one question (if You want to add just one), wait for answer and forget about it afterwords.
Now, as a Guest You don’t even receive mail about new answer to Your question, You cannot comment, up-vote or follow, to know if there is some activity etc.
There are many people who do not want to register and will give up from any contribution if they have no other way to participate.
So, I think, we need a better way for handling guest users.
- Guest comments.
- Voting (guest voting with some kind of IP and session/cookies protection to ensure no abuse).
- Following.
- Better handling of an guest adding questions and answers (name, mail, support for gravatars).
- Mail notifications for guest.
- Some simple moderation and antispam solution for guest.
Adding required mail field and gravatars is fairly simple, I done it in my Anspress 3.0.7. Same case with comments, as they are based on a WP Comment System. So maybe it is time to add this functions to the Anspress 4.x?
Hello @priard,
Thanks for sharing your idea. Yes, its good time to improve guest posting. I will add it (but after 1st January release).
I was thinking to add two guest modes:
- Registered – which let logged in user to post as guest.
- Non registered – this will be what you have suggested.
There will be some complication tracking non-logged in guest user but will find a way. I will follow up this discussion after 1st Jan release.
@priard, this is useful when a user don’t want to reveal their personal info. Quora have this feature.
Yes, I know. Ok, but only if admin will be able to switch it on/off. It makes sense if registered user want to have some kind of privacy, so nobody can see his profile (he cannot be searched and will not be visible in the Users directory), stats, reputation etc. but no guest posting. He should post as him.
Hi Rahul,
I do not think, that 1 option is necessary, if registered user really need to post as guest, then he can simply logout, and post as non registered. But I cannot think of any scenario in which that can be really justified.