TOTS is a collaborative blog which means we have many authors who create the content you read.
Having a collaborative blog has some challenges (organization is a big one) but using the right tools certainly helps.
Here is my list of the must have plugins for a collaborative blog.
I have this plugin on all of my blogs. It allows you to customize your login page with a logo (or any other picture for that matter). It completely erases any confusion one may have that they are attempting to login to the wrong website. Having a custom login page also makes your blog look professional.
The program is fairly easy to use and only requires minor tweaking.
Broken Link Checker for WordPress
Having multiple authors on one blog can get very confusing. Having a link checker is fantastic I receive emails when it detects broken link and I can fix them or delete the links. It is perfect in case one of the authors attached an incomplete link. I do not need to check every link during the editing process.
Again I have this plugin on all of my blogs. It is the perfect tool to see what new posts have been added, what has been scheduled and what has already been posted. Admin Post Color allows you to quickly determine the status of your blog with very little thinking.
Imsanity automatically takes large image uploads and scales them to a manageable size. Your guest posters may not care (or know) how much space an image takes on your server or that it will slow down your website. Using Imasanity allows you to save all of that time resizing images as it does all the work for you.
Thanks for the recommendations. It helps to hear from someone with experience. Is there an ideal number of collaborators that seems to be a sweet spot or can you go with as many collaborators as you want?
Hi Aruna,
We always had 5-6 contributors for TOTS and that number worked well. With adding http://www.totsfamily.com our contributors have been jumped up to 17 in total. So far we have found we need to be MUCH more organized. I do not know if there is a ‘sweet spot’ for numbers more so have contributors that you can trust and are amazing at what they do.
Katrina
Thanks – the right people are so important. I appreciate the reply.
Hi Katrina,
Thanks very much for the suggestions! Our old custom login page broke and we have yet to find a plugin that works well – I’ll definitely try this one.
Also, I LOVE the admin post color idea. We have a number of authors on our site so we use a calendar plugin to keep everything straight, but there are a number of times where we need to go to the basic post editing section and I can see where this will really come in handy.
Thanks again – terrific recommendations!
Stefanie
Color admin post is seriously the best idea ever. Having a multi-author blog do you find the calendar is enough? We have google doc spreadsheets for everything to keep TOTS straight.
It works but I think that’s because there are only 2 people with editorial privileges who can scheduled posts. We organize the calendar and let everyone know what their scheduled publishing date is (as well as when their posts need to be in). All our authors can add their posts directly to the site, but none will post until they’re approved by an editor. So far, so good…(fingers crossed) 😉
That is what we do. Cat and I have admin access and schedule. Cat also reminds the contributors a week before their posts are due.
Hi Katrina,
Sorry – don’t mean to have a whole private conversation here , but your last comment just cracked me up!! I ALWAYS have to send reminders – and I’ve already sent them calendars for the whole year – and for some of them I’ve sent them multiple times cause they lose them 😉 Still, I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world! 🙂
btw – so glad to have met you!! Will definitely be subscribing to your site
Thank you so much for these plug in tips! Going to put them to use now!
These are great ideas! Thanks for posting this!