How do I add a collaborator guest account to my site?

Pressable makes it easy for you to collaborate with other people on your website. This makes it easy for you to share credentials with designers, developers and other collaborators, while keeping your account and other sites in it safe and secure. Collaborator access will grant them site-specific access to MyPressable, the site’s wp-admin, SFTP, and phpMyAdmin.

We also have account-level access for Collaborators, outlined here.

Add a Collaborator

To add a collaborator to an individual website under your account login to MyPressable, click the name of the site you wish to add the collaborator to and navigate to the Collaborators menu on the left navigation bar. Click on the Add Collaborators button to view the option.

Step 1: Enter the collaborator’s email address.

Step 2: Select appropriate permissions for the User and then click on Add. Please note that, regardless of these permissions, your collaborator will see the site within theirMyPressable control panel.

Once added, you will be able to see the list of Users on a site similar to this:

Your collaborator will receive an email that looks something like this:

NOTE: If you would like a collaborator to be added to all of your future and/or existing sites, you can add them as an Account-Level Collaborator.

Collaborator Access and Permissions

Collaborators have access only to the website to which they have been added and can view/edit only the aspects of the site for which they have permissions.

By default, the permissions are set to enable the following functions:

Apply the principle of least privilege, and remember you can always adjust collaborator permissions later if they need extended access.

Updating User Permissions

If you need to update permissions for a user after adding them, this can be done from the Collaborators section under the Connections menu as well. Under the Actions drop-down next to the user you want to update permissions for, you can find the Permissions option. Once you click on that, a pop-up window opens with the list of permissions. Once you check/un-check the permissions that you want to update, you can click on the Update Permissions button.

You will see the list of permissions, check or un-check actions the User is permitted to perform and then click on the Update Permissions button:

See the Collaborators in Bulk section for information on updating or removing collaborators from multiple sites.

Removing a Collaborator

You can remove collaborators at any time by visiting MyPressable, selecting the site you’d like to remove the collaborator from, clicking the Collaborators menu. Under the Actions drop-down, you can find the Delete option.

That will open a pop-up that will ask if you’d like to delete the collaborator’s WP Admin user from the site, as well as remove them from your account, and also ask you to confirm the collaborator’s email address before deleting:

If the user no longer requires Administrator access in your WP Admin but you’d still like to keep their content assigned to their user, you can change their role to a Subscriber role in the WP Admin of the site:

See the Collaborators in Bulk section for information on updating or removing collaborators from multiple sites.

Collaborators in Bulk

Collaborators can be added to and removed from multiple sites at once from the “Collaborators” page here: my.pressable.com/collaborators

Please see the information in the Account-Level Collaborators section for more details.

Collaborating on a Website

If you’ve been asked to collaborate on a Pressable website, you’ll receive an email asking you to create a password.

Once you’ve done so you’ll have access to your own MyPressable control panel, with your own permissions, depending on what the account owner set for you.

Account-Level Collaborators

If you would like for a specific collaborator to be added to all future sites created in your account by default (and all existing sites if desired), this can be done from the Collaborators page here: https://my.pressable.com/collaborators

You will be led through a series of four steps when creating any collaborator:

Once you click on the Add Collaborator button, you will see the pop-up with 4 steps as outlined below –

• Step 1: Add email – Enter the email address of the collaborator.
  
• Step 2: Site capabilities – Choose whether the collaborator is added to all new sites created within the account and whether the collaborator can create new sites under the account (remember that this can affect your billing). In addition, you can add capabilities to manage/receive notifications.
  NOTE: If you, as the account owner, set the Default PHP Version in your account settings, this is the default value that will be used for sites created by your collaborators as well. It will not use the Default PHP Version set in their account(s).
• Step 3: Select sites – Select the sites you’d like the collaborator to be added to. You can select specific sites to add the collaborator to, or use the Add this collaborator to all existing sites? toggle button to add to all existing sites.
• 
• Step 4: Set permissions – Choose the permissions the collaborator should be given (remember that these will be their permissions for all future sites).
  

Once this Account-Level Collaborator has been added, they will show up in the Collaborators section on this page: https://my.pressable.com/collaborators
In this section, you can also see the 2FA status and pending invitations for each collaborator.

If you need to update an Account-Level Collaborator’s permissions and capabilities, you can do that by clicking on the user’s email address from the Manage Collaborators page or visiting the link https://my.pressable.com/collaborators/<email>
Under the Collaborator Actions menu, click on New Site capabilities and this will open a section where you can toggle the Capabilities and check/uncheck Permissions. Once done, click on Update New Site Capabilities button at the bottom to save the changes.

When removing Account-Level Collaborators, you will see a pop-up screen like this:

That will open a popup that will ask if you’d like to delete the collaborator’s WP Admin user from all of your sites as well as remove them from your account, and also ask you to confirm the collaborator’s email address before deleting.

Collaborator Hasn’t Received Email

If you setup an Account-Level Collaborator but they haven’t received their invitation email yet, the most likely cause is that you don’t have any sites setup under the account. Please first make sure a site is created under the account, then re-setup the Account-Level Collaborator.

Understanding User Permissions and Access

There are many different permissions you can assign to your collaborators. If you are unsure about any of what any these do, please see the list below:

General Access

• WP Access – This permission will create an administrator user on your site for this collaborator to allow access to the WP Admin Dashboard.
• SFTP Access – Provides SFTP credentials and access to your collaborator. This is useful for access to the site’s files to manually upload/change/delete them.
• PHPMyAdmin Access – Allows your collaborator access to your sites through the popular open source phpMyAdmin software and programmatically. This provides them with MySQL access to your sites.

Content & Data

• Manage Notes – Allows your collaborator to add, edit and delete notes for this site in the My Pressable Control Panel.
• Clone Site – Allows your collaborator to create an exact copy of your site – generally this is used for debugging without affecting the live site or for development work. This will be created in your account, not theirs, and may impact your billing (e.g. a very large site is cloned which causes you to go over your storage allowance).
• Download Backups – Allows your collaborator to download previous file system and database backups for this site.
• Restore Site – Allows your collaborator to use the Site Restore functionality. Using this, they can restore your site to one of the previous backups we hold for the site.

High-Risk Actions

• Enable Site – Sites in your account can be enabled and disabled to allow or disallow public access. This will allow your collaborator to enable your site if it is currently disabled.
• Disable Site – Allows your collaborator to disable your site if it is currently enabled, preventing public access to it.
• Convert Site – Allows your collaborator to change a staging site to a live site and vice versa.
• Delete Site – Allows your collaborator to delete your site. Deletion of a site will schedule it and all backups for deletion. We apply a grace period to all deleted sites to account for accidental deletion/data recovery, but beyond this period we will be unable to recover your site or any backups. Proceed with caution when giving this permission to collaborators.
• Execute Bulk Operations – Allows your collaborator to execute bash commands or run bulk operations on sites they have access to. By default, this is disabled for all existing collaborators.

Site Configuration

• Update Site Custom Name – Allows your collaborator to change the custom name given to your site in the My Pressable Control Panel.
• Update Site PHP Version – Allows your collaborator to change the PHP version in use by your site. Over time, PHP versions become outdated and need to be changed. Some plugins/themes may also require (or not be compatible with) certain versions.
• Update Site WordPress Version – Allows your collaborator to change the version of WordPress your site is running, such as updating to a new beta version for testing.
• Manage DNS – Allows your collaborator to add and remove domain(s) from your site, as well as edit the DNS entries for those domains (such as MX Records for your e-mail service).
• Manage Performance – Allows your collaborator access to the “Performance” tab for your site in the My Pressable Control Panel. Actions such as enabling and disabling the CDN, flushing the Object Cache and viewing site analytics can be done in this tab.
• Allocate Resources – This section lets you view and manage your site’s Current PHP Memory, Purchase PHP Memory to increase limits as needed and review recent changes in the Order History.
• Plugin Management Access – Allows your collaborator access to Plugin Management functionality (add-on functionality that needs to be purchased per-site). This will allow them to setup and manage update schedules for plugins on your site(s).
• Manage Git – Allows your collaborator access to the “Git” tab for your site in the My Pressable Control Panel. This will allow them to setup and manage the connection between your site and a GitHub repository.
• Manage WordPress – Allows your collaborator to manage plugins/themes from the dashboard. They can view/update/activate/deactivate plugins/themes on the site with the feature. Also allows your collaborator to enable/disable Basic Authentication.
• Security – This section lets you control how your site communicates and operates at a system level. With Egress Firewall Rules, you can restrict outbound connections, while PHP Filesystem (FS) Permission lets you manage how PHP interacts with files for better protection. Additionally, Disconnect SSH allows you to terminate active SSH sessions if needed, helping you lock down your site and reduce potential security risks.

User Management

• Create Collaborator – Allows your collaborator to add other collaborators to this site. This will allow them to provide any permissions to the new collaborator, including those they do not have themselves. Proceed with caution when giving this permission to collaborators.
• Delete Collaborator – Allows your collaborator to delete other collaborators from this site.
• Reset Collaborator Password – By default, your collaborator can always reset their own SFTP password. This permission will allow your collaborator to also reset the SFTP passwords of any other collaborators on the site.

Manage Collaborators via Pressable API

Collaborators can be added and managed via the API directly:
https://my.pressable.com/documentation/api/v1#collaborators