What will I learn to do?

Having a lot of contributors collaborating to your online magazine can lead to some issues:

 Suppose that meanwhile you are editing one of your articles, your Administrator opens the same article and starts correcting it because he noticed some spelling mistakes. Which changes will be taken into account when you save it?

 If you have a large team of authors, you may also wonder how to keep the whole team informed of the activity.

Some functionalities are available in SPIP to answer such cases.

In this lesson, you will learn how to spot articles that are in the process of edition by another member of the team; and also how to notify your co-workers that you are no longer editing an article and that they can work on it.
You will also be taught how to use the automated emails available in SPIP, in order to keep your team or your readers acquainted.

What kind of issue may arise with co-edition?

An article is said to be co-edited when at least two people are working on it at the same time.

This situation is more frequent than one would think; the most common occurrence is with administrators and editors. The editor may be producing or amending content, while the administrator may be reviewing the spelling or the style. Suppose that:
 the author opens the article in edit mode and adds two new paragraphs
 meanwhile, the administrator also opens the article as he just noticed spelling mistakes
 the editor saves the article with the two new paragraphs
 a few minutes later, the administrator saves the article again - with the correct spelling

The author’s version then gets overwritten by the administrator’s and the two new paragraphs are not saved; they have to be re-written…!

In order to co-edit without trouble in SPIP, it is important for the various contributors to make sure that those articles are not already opened in edit mode.

How can I activate the warning messages in SPIP?

To activate this option :

 Click on the Configuration icon
 Click on "Advanced functions" tab
 Scroll to the "Collaborative work on articles" block
 Select "Activate warning messages"
 Click on Submit

How can I spot articles that are being edited by other team members?

First of all, remember that, when you are not the only one working on the private interface, the list of users who are logged-in appears on the secondary banner.

If you select an article which is currently edited (or has just been modified) by another author, a warning message alerts you that there may be a risk to modify this article now.