Read only access for reviewers

[acrymble]

Here's what I was trying to achieve:

A workflow that allowed authors & editors to check the post status as it goes through the writing and review process. BUT I only want reviewers to be able to see the post, not make any changes. Ideally by giving them a URL.

Here's what happened:
By enabling the edit flow post statuses, the post becomes private and therefore the URL only works for people who are logged in with sufficient privileges (author, editor, etc). I didn't want to have to give reviewers that level of power over a post.

I wasn't able to achieve what I had wanted, but I have been able to set up a system that allows me to give time-limited editing access to a user to a specific post, which is not ideal, but better than nothing. To do this I installed 2 plugins:

User Role Editor
Role Scoper

User Role Editor allowed me to create a new Wordpress Role, "Reviewer". This was supposed to let me assign the ability to "read private posts" but this doesn't seem to actually work.

I then was able to use Role Scoper to give anyone with "Reviewer" status the ability to edit a specific post for a certain amount of time.

The workflow is a bit clumsy, but it doesn't seem possible to use Edit Flow with logged-out reviewers. Any thoughts on improving this are much appreciated and I'm happy to dismantle if a better solution is found.

[acrymble]

I may have a better solution, which I'm currently trying out with a reviewer. You can go to the preview page and "save as" the page as an HTML file, which can be emailed. If he's able to use it fine then I think that's a lighter-weight way of achieving what those two plugins have failed to do.

[acrymble]

I'm going to undo the 1st solution. Emailing the HTML files is so much easier. I'll take care of it.

[acrymble]

I have disassembled and deactivated "Role Scoper" and "User Role Editor".

Jeremy these can be deleted, but I'll leave this open for you to read first.

Adam