Reader’s Password

The Reader’s Password feature is finished, tested, and online. Here’s the specifics:

Each diarist can assign up to five reader passwords to their diary. You can access the maintenance screen for reader passwords by going to the contents page of your diary and clicking the My Diary menu. You will see a new selection for Readers Passwords.

On that screen, you can add, edit, and delete reader passwords. A reader password consists of the password itself, a description, and a yes/no private flag.

The password is straightforward – you are limited to eight characters or less, and please use something that is not easy for somebody else to figure out. A mixture of letters and numbers is usually best.

The description is important, not only because you can use it to tell you who you gave the password to, but because it is what will appear as the signature for anybody leaving a note using that password.

The private entry flag is important. You can select whether or not to let your reader access entries that you have marked private. If set to yes, the reader will be able to read and leave notes on all your entries, including private entries. If set to no, the reader will not see your private entries in your table of contents, and will not be able to read them or leave notes.

So, what does a reader password do? You can use it if you want to have a private diary, but give access to somebody else. To the rest of the world, your diary will be invisible, but your reader will be able to read it and leave notes.

Or, you can keep an OD members-only diary, but use a reader password to allow in somebody from outside, or somebody from Free OD. In the same way, your diary will remain members-only to everybody else, but your reader will be able to read it and leave notes.

Or, you can give it to a person who is not a member of OD or OD Free, to allow them to leave you notes – without having a diary.

A reader password does NOT give your reader the ability to write in your diary, change any settings, change your colors or styles, or access your read all notes page – the reader can only go to your contents page, read entries, and leave notes.

As I said above, each diarist is limited to five reader passwords, and how many to use and how they are maintained is completely up to you. Only you can access the maintenance screen, so if one of your readers forgets their password only you can give it back to them. The OD staff will not be able to send passwords to readers who have forgotten them – so be sure to tell your readers that it is important to remember them, or to contact you if they don’t.

Once you have assigned a password, your reader can log in with it by going to the front page of the site, and clicking the “OD Reader login” prompt on the left side of the front page. They will be asked for your diary name and their reader password, and if they log in successfully they will be taken directly to your diary contents page. After that, they can read and leave notes on the diary. On subsequent visits, your reader will always have to log in through the prompt on the front page – this is required each time they visit.

Enjoy!