I’d like to suggest a new feature to improve the contributor experience on Ghost, focusing on a streamlined and secure workflow for guest writers. The idea is to have a cleaner interface where invited contributors can draft and submit posts without accessing sensitive areas like settings, snippets, or the admin sidebar. This would ensure that contributors can focus solely on writing while keeping private or confidential information hidden.
Additionally, it would be fantastic to introduce an editorial workflow that supports collaboration. For example, allowing multiple team members to comment directly within a draft post could facilitate feedback and revisions before publication. Once a contributor submits their article, an admin could review, edit, and publish it seamlessly.
This approach would make it easier to onboard guest writers securely and foster collaborative editing, enhancing the overall publishing process. I’d love to hear your thoughts or any similar ideas you’ve explored!
Roy, could you add some more detail on how this would be different from contributors? They already have no access to settings.
I’m not sure if contributors can save new snippets. Snippets would be a weird spot for anything confidential to be, because once you’re publishing, that content is presumably available on the web, so I guess I’m a little bit confused there.
If you need commenting on drafts, you might take a look at hypothes.is, which works fine with Ghost previews. Here’s a thing I wrote: How to run your editorial workflow in Ghost
Recently, a contributor from the EU asked me about a snippet I had saved for a brand collaboration embed. I was surprised by this, as I hadn’t shared any details about my snippets (I have multiple snippets saved for table of contents, signup forms, etc – different ones for free and paid members). It turns out they accessed this information through the saved snippets in the editor (see attached screenshot). This led to a discussion about privacy and ensuring contributors only see need-to-know information while drafting posts.
The same goes for code injection where you may have information that contributors need not see (although I guess you can insert this after the guest post has been submitted). Additionally, pop-ups about new features, like the newsletter design update shown in the screenshot, aren’t typically relevant to guest contributors and could be distracting.
To address this, I’d love to see a “vanilla” version of the editor for contributors, where they can simply write and submit posts for review without accessing snippets, settings, or other admin features. This would enhance privacy, simplify the contributor experience, and streamline the editorial process.