When WordPress was first deployed at BU for website content management, its popularity grew quickly. But it also soon became clear that using standard WordPress for departmental websites lacked advanced editing permissions and an editing workflow. This demand prompted development of plugins for just those purposes. BU Section Editing and BU Versions are available as plugins on BU WordPress. We’ve also open-sourced the plugins to benefit the overall WordPress community.

BU Section Editing

The BU Section Editing plugin gives Site Admins more granular control over who can edit what on their site by introducing the concept of Section Groups. Section Groups consist of a group of users who are assigned membership in an editing group. Along with defining the members, Site Admins also specify a set of permitted posts, pages, and, if your site has any, custom post types that members of the group can edit.

A more thorough description and detailed guide can be found in the BU Section Editing Plugin collection of how-to pages.

BU Versions

The BU Versions plugin provides users the ability to take a published post and clone it so that edits can be made and saved on an alternate version of the content without having to publish the changes immediately. This is particularly useful for updating policy pages or similar content that requires a careful review, and changes that need to be made on a specific date and time. Alternate versions of your content can be edited, staged, and scheduled for publication at a future date. When the alternate version of the content is published, it then replaces the original (live published) version.

A more thorough description and detailed guide can be found in the BU Versions Plugin collection of how-to pages.

BU Navigation

In the process of developing these plugins, IS&T worked closely with Marketing & Communications’ Interactive Design group to also make improvements to the BU Navigation Manager plugin. These changes and the new plugins bring a best-of-class user experience to this new suite of tools. These changes were designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, and take effect immediately across all BU WordPress sites. Please see BU Navigation Plugin for more information about these changes.

Roles – Changes & Additions

Finally, default user roles in WordPress have changed as a result of functionality to support these new workflows. Only the names of existing roles have changed — the capabilities associated with existing roles have not changed.

  • Site Admin (formerly Web Admin) — access to user management, site options, section groups, contact form recipients, and other/future admin features.
  • Lead Editor (formerly Web Editor) — edit pages and news posts, create new pages and posts, access calendar functions.
  • Section Editor (new role) — available when the BU Section Editing plugin is enabled, create and edit pages/posts only in sections where granted permission to do so.
  • Contributor (new role) — create new drafts, but has limited metadata editing ability and cannot publish.

To learn more about these new plugins and improved functionality, follow the links in the content above for more detailed and in-depth documentation.