How do I add a collaborator guest account to my site?
Category:TutorialsLast modified: November 15, 2023
Overview
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 Connectionsmenu on the left navigation bar. Under that, you can go to the Collaborators section. Click on the Add Collaborator 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 their MyPressable 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 only have access to the website they have been added to, and can only view/edit aspects of the site that they have permissions for.
By default, the permissions are set to enable the following functions:
NOTE: When setting User permissions, ensure that only required actions are added. Especially when giving access to actions that impact Plan usage – create/delete/convert sites; and also permissions to add/delete/manage other users.
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.
NOTE: If they are an Account-Level Collaborator, you should make these changes from the Collaborators page, unless you only want to update their permissions on a specific site or subset of 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 Connectionsmenu and then the Collaborators section. Under the “Actions” drop-down, you can find the “Delete” option.
That will open a popup 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:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Pressable will attempt to delete the WordPress user with this collaborator’s email if you choose to also remove the WP Admin user account from the site. Posts credited to this user will be reassigned to the oldest WordPress Admin available.
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.
NOTE: If they are an Account-Level Collaborator, you should make these changes from your Profile page, unless you only want to remove them from a specific site or subset of 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
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:
Step 1: Add email – Enter the email address of the collaborator.
Step 2 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 3: New 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). 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 4: Choose 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 Manage Collaborators section on this page: https://my.pressable.com/collaborators
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.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Pressable will attempt to delete the WordPress user with this collaborator’s email if you choose to also remove the WP Admin user account from the site(s). Posts credited to this user will be reassigned to the oldest WordPress Admin available.
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:
Actions
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.
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).
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.
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.
Overview
WP Access – This permission will create an administrator user on your site for this collaborator to allow access to the WP Admin Dashboard.
Update Site Custom Name – Allows your collaborator to change the custom name given to your site in the My Pressable Control Panel.
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.
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.
Convert Site – Allows your collaborator to change a staging site to a live site and vice versa.
Manage Notes – Allows your collaborator to add, edit and delete notes for this site in the My Pressable Control Panel.
Domains
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).
Performance
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.
Users
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.
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.
Backups and Restores
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.
Git
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.
Plugin Management
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).