Disable authors' ability to edit publication time/date?

  • Unknown's avatar
    socsavvy · Member ·

    Hi, I ran into an issue recently and I’d like some advice about how to avoid any more in the future. I use WordPress for teaching, and I have each student register as an author for our class blog. This term, I realized that authors have the ability to edit the time/date that a post was published on. Is there a way to disable this feature (manipulating the time a post was published) while preserving the time/date stamp? Again, I have students assigned to “author” roles, so it would be ideal if I could restrict this function for that role only. But, any little bit will help. Thanks for your time and advice.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    rachelmcr · Member ·

    Hi there,

    There isn’t a way to disable an author’s ability to edit the time/date on a post at WordPress.com, but I thought of a couple ways you can deal with this:

    1. You can change your students’ roles to contributors instead of authors. That way, they can only edit the post up until it is published. An administrator has to review and publish contributors’ posts, so you’d know when the post was submitted to be published, and the students couldn’t make any changes (including to the time/date) after publication.

    2. You can check the revisions on each post. Every time someone click the Save Draft or Update buttons on a post, a revision is saved. The revision includes the time and date the revision was made, so you can check to see if a student went back and changed the post time/date.

    I hope these ideas help! Please let me know if you have any questions. :)

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