I have many concerns about allowing anonymous users to create blog posts and threads - however if the primary need is to enable this for event attendees, this looks much more feasible (and the reall question becomes is to allow them to login to authenticate).

I would appreciate comments from others. 

As Dmitry mentioned, there are a lot of issues that this can lead to. For example, someone could post "Spam" blog posts which could hurt the usefulness of your blog, and your organization's reputation.

Because of these risks, we want to make sure that we a firm grasp on how our clients want to use the feature.

To that end: How would your group use the ability for non-members to be able to write their own blog posts?

We would like this feature as well!!

We are a trade organization and want to allow members of the public to post questions that our members who are local building experts can answer on the forum. 

I understand the complexity of opening up the forum to everyone regarding spam. BUT we'd REALLY like to have the public be able to use it. 

We see this as a way (as a trade organization) to allow and facilitate interaction between Joe Public who wants to know about solar panels for his home and our members who are experts in this arena.

Ideally the posts regarding each question then appear in the gadgets you designed to host snippets of the conversation.... this gadget is on our home page and a great way for people to SEE discussions happening in the community between homeowners wanting green building services and our members who provide those services.

What can we do to accomplish this? If not by opening up the forum for new comments by the public, the workaround is that the public can comment on a topic that is STARTED by a member - though that does not break the posts into threads that are viewable on the gadget you created. SO not ideal but do-able.

Please continue to think about this request.

Thanks

Meagan Forney
Boulder Green Building Guild

Hi Meagan:

Thanks for the details in your post. It's just that type of information that we look for so that we can devise a system that works!

 I'll add it to the notes we already have as we continue to look at this suggestion.

In the very next release we are going to introduce so called "Payment from profile" functionality. One of the change withing the scope is non-member contacts will be able to log in to the site (to see their invoices and payments for event registrations).

I think that we need to at least wait until this is done and then bring this dialog up again. I'm thinking in the following way:

• Each new public thread post requires at least email and name to be entered
• System generates new contact in contacts database (note plan limits) and sends password to the specified email 
• If post with the existing email is being made, system asks  to log in (contacts with duplicating emails are not created) 
• Also, all new public posts require Captcha (cannot be switched off for not logged in users)
• Admin is able to control whether he wants or doesn't want to allow such public posts with corresponding new contacts creation.