It goes without saying that creating blog posts from the Dashboard is one of the strengths of WordPress. However, many users cherish the desire to create blog posts from the WordPress front-end as well. In fact, creating front-end blog posts is one of the key requirements of a successful multi-author WordPress blog. If you’re an owner of a multi-author WordPress blog, you simply cannot allow every author access to the WordPress Dashboard. Accessing the Dashboard for someone not familiar with it, can lead to various privacy and security issues. You can limit access to Dashboard options by setting up user roles. However, it is best to limit access for authors to their user profiles on front-end.
Now the pivotal question that arises here is — How can authors create front-end blog posts with WordPress? The only proper way to do it is by using the ProfileGrid plugin. ProfileGrid will not just allow a consolidated view of all of a user’s blog posts, but also the ability to create new blog posts from that user’s front-end profile.
Before we move forward and explore this functionality of ProfileGrid, we need to install and activate ProfileGrid on our WordPress blog. You can do this by going to the ‘Plugins’ -> ‘Add New’ menu from inside the WordPress Dashboard. Just search for ProfileGrid and follow the usual process of installing and activating a plugin.
The User Profile Blog Tab
Next, we’ll visit the user profile on the front-end. You can see that there’s a tab on the user profile named ‘Blog‘. This is the tab that displays all the blog posts created by that user. In addition, it also displays the option to create new blog posts. Since I already have a blog post published, it is displaying in the list of my blog posts.
Along with the old blog post, there is also a button which has ‘New Blog Post’ written on it. This is the button that’ll allow us to create front-end blog posts. Let’s click on the button and see what it does.
First Steps to Create Front-end Blog Posts
Clicking on the ‘New Blog Post’ button opens up the screen to create a new blog post from front-end. The screen offers all the options you get while creating blog posts from the WordPress Dashboard.
Let us create this new blog post and see what happens next…
This is the message appearing on the screen after we submit our blog post. This message means that the administrator of the blog will review our submitted post first. And if the administrator approves of the post, he/she will allow it to publish on the blog.
Controlling Behaviour of Front-end Blog Posts
But what if you do not want the front-end posts approved first? Well, it’s quite easy to change that behaviour of ProfileGrid. Just visit the Global Settings from ProfileGrid’s dashboard menu and click on the ‘User Blogs’ settings. Inside this settings category, there’s an option ‘Default Blog Post Status’. Change it to ‘Published’ instead of ‘Pending’. There is also the option to set post status to ‘Draft’, if need for that arises.
Now any post submitted from the front-end will be published on the site right away. With the default front-end post status set to ‘Published’, let’s see what happens when we submit another post…
And here’s the post submit message…
Let’s quickly check if it is appearing on the ‘Blog’ profile tab or not…
Looks like the post was published on the blog this time without a hitch. And it isn’t just the blog post itself, you can also see that the ‘Notifications’ tab is showing a counter on it. Let’s click on it and see what it has to say…
The ‘Notifications’ tab informs us that our blog post is published. You can control notification for users submitting the blog post, as well as the admin, from the ‘User Blogs’ settings. These options are…
Find Out What Else ProfileGrid Has to Offer
This concludes our overview of the Front-end Blog Posts functionality of ProfileGrid. Do try it out and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And while you are checking out blogging with ProfileGrid, I recommend that you also check out how it can consolidate user data from other plugins in one user profile.
For more info on ProfileGrid, stay tuned to our blog.
I do not have a Tinymce Editor in the blog, although all the “Use Tinymce Editor” settings are enabled. What is the problem? http://prntscr.com/jt6iqx
Could be a conflict with some plugin. Could you please reach out to your support team to analyze this further? thanks.
when i published Blog Post its showing on notifications and blog.. but when i click on view button showing 404 error..
Ok, could you please open support ticket to sort this out? thanks.
Is there a way to view all posts from the frontend?
As of now, there is no direct way to display all blog posts on front-end with ProfileGrid. However, you may achieve it by using any other third party plugin which shows custom post type since blog posts belong to that category.
Hi, but the blog post don’t have a Category, how is possible to assign one? Thanks!
You do not need to assign the category to show blog posts on front end. Using any plugin which displays custom posts, you can render blog post on the page. You may use post type ‘profilegrid_blogs’ to display it on page.
Only if it allowed relocate blog posts elsewhere within a wordpress site, it’d be great.
Blog posts are custom post types and cannot be relocated as of now. But we do have the change related to this planned for future release.
Is it correct that a user can only attach one image with his/her post each time? If true, that is not good.
Or this can be reset?
Yes, as of now ProfileGrid allow users to attach only one image with post. But we do have enhancement to upgrade this limitation in near future.
How to attach a good button to a posted blog. I want to have a function that only the logged-in person can press once. What should I do?
ProfileGrid does not have this feature. You may use any other third plugin to achieve this functionality.
Hi There,
There is no edit or delete option once the post is published from the user end.
Thanks,
We have noted and forwarded this requirement to our development team to include in future updates.
Hello.
Is there an option to edit or delete a blog post? I do not see anything.
Thanks.
Hi,
Thank you for writing to us.
As of now only the site admin and the group manager can edit or delete the blog post.
Thank you,
Hello,
How do you delete a blog post when you’re the admin?
I posted one but I can’t find how to delete it, even though I’m admin.
Thank you
Hi,
You may achieve this by login to your WordPress Dashboard and go to the User Blogs Menu.
1. Click on User Blogs
2. All the blog posted will appear
3. Select the blog from the list
4. Bulk Actions >> Click on the Dropdown here
5. Select “Move to trash” and Click on Apply to delete the selected blog post.
Thank you,
Hi, I can’t find the option for delete the blog posts.
Can you explain exactly where the posts are? In the users blog section I only see general settings.
Thanks
Only the Administrator can delete the blog posts from the dashboard as of now.
Hi – although I like the plugin so far – I have a few suggestions for future enhancements…
1. Allow a video to be added to user blog posts
2. Allow more photos to be added within the blog body content
3. Allow captions for uploaded images where copyright needs to be displayed (or other info)
4. User can only select from existing tags on the site (letting users add as many tags as they want can lead to issues so would prefer these to be admin suggestions).
If any or all of the above could be introduced in future updates I think it would make it very powerful!
Thanks
Thanks for your great suggestions. We have made note of these points and will surely consider them for inclusion in future updates. However, due to prior commitments on some priority tasks, we cannot give a timeline at the moment.
Hi
Is there a way to add pictures to the blog text?
As of now, You may add the external links of picture in text or add the featured image for blog post.
is there any option to edit and delete blog from frontend ?
We have this feature on our roadmap and we will surely add this in our future updates.
Hi
After creating a blog the user sees a message that the blog is waiting to be approved. In the german version this text has errors. How can I fix this?
You may change the text using “Loco Translate” plugin. ProfileGrid has a POT file that includes all English text from the plugin for translation.