Just to see how a WP site would work for our purposes, I created a sample site. Some things that occurred to me:
- Wouldn’t it be great to have different users for all the letter writers in the novel? How would this work, though, when the posts are exported for later use? Typically, authors are “mapped onto” authors already existent on other sites. Of course, if we keep the information about authorship in the title, and perhaps tag or categorize them appropriately, this would not be a problem. Perhaps we could give all authors their own accounts for the prototype blog, which would remain up for others to see, but if an instructor wanted an export, the categories/tags would subsist. We can only really do this on a private install, though, as I don’t have enough emails to go around. Without creating more, that is.
- How to deal with the “editorial” apparatus? Perhaps a user for Richardson, who then “comments” on the entries? This, however, would suggest that the letters were not really edited, just presented as is. The chronology is off. A link to some other page/sidebar with the annotation? Is there a plugin that would allow us to add floating notes?
I’ll add more thoughts as I play with the sample site, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them below!
Tonya Howe 