Almost ten years ago, when we were drafting the concept of Campsite, we’ve operated under the premise that each author will post her own article. Time has proven us wrong, and while Campsite web developers have found ways around this shortcoming (e.g. with authors as dropdown topics) which hampered advanced search, list article by author or author related statistics, now is the time to fix it.
We will thus implement the following in the 3.2 release:
1. A static Author field (static as in Article Name) for each article.
2. The field will be editable and will be filled in by default with the article owner’s name (taken from registered staff users).
3. There will be a type-ahead feature that will compare the typed-in text with the registered staff users and a list of previously entered authors. The idea is that a publication would not end with three authors out of one, e.g. someone could enter Sava R. Tatic, Sava Tatić, or Sava Tatic, whereas the publication’s standard is Sava Tatić.
4. The priority for type-ahead search would thus be: 1. registered users, 2. Authors’ table, which is generated on the fly, as the publication evolves. (Implemented in 3.2)
In 3.4.x or later we should implement the following:
- Admin interface part for administering the Authors table (#2774)
- List of Authors: pagination, search, add, delete, edit (by clicking on author name)
- Author Profile page:
- First Name, Last Name, alias(es?)
- Type (e.g. writer, photographer, blogger, video producer, wire service/external source): ideally make it flexible
- Contacts (allow one of the e-mail addresses to be used for easy mailto) – otherwise to be used in a future commissioning component
- photo
- biography (solve multilinguality in the standard Campsite way?).
- Ability to switch between type-ahead and a dropdown (or ajax popup with authors), or limit typeahead only to the approved Authors table (I guess we should add a user right to control who has the right to manipulate the authors table). The purpose of this would be greater editorial discipline and control.
- Customizable type-ahead priority (in system settings? We’ll be using type-ahead for topics, more on that on a separate page)
- Display author name in all article lists (alongside with creator or toggle creator/author?)
- Author-related stats (how many articles/photos/items, how many reads, how many words published? etc.) – API for modules and external applications for estimating cost of an author’s copy (e.g. rate per word times number of words, and sum of all)
Issues to be resolved:
- Multiple authors:
- how to list articles and other content by individual authors
- and how to enter multiple authors (we have only one entry field) on the Article Edit page
