What are the methods to create a user-generated-content website?
I know each has his own favorite way to do that, please elaborate on your own method, how to implement it and the pros/cons.
(This is mainly a wiki question, I just figured I know about 7 methods for that)
To be more specific: Which ways do you use to give visitors the ability to add contnet to your website (posts, images, videos, etc…)
Currently known ways:
Use comments as input form. see the actual way described here. The comments can be altered to have more fields and contain a WYSIWYG editor for better user experience.
Use TDO Mini Forms plugin to create a user-generated-data form. the users will fill the form, which will create a new draft post to be published by the site admin.
Use a contact form plugin with wordpress email publishing mechanism. Set the contact form destination as the email set up as wordpress “feed” email.
Write your own form that publish posts. this is described nicely in this post. You create a page template that shows the publishing post, and uses the data to create a draft (or post) using “insert_post”.
Using gravity forms plugin. One of the plugin features is to “Allow users to automatically create a post”
Setting the default user role as contributer. Once set, you need to allow people to register & login to your site. every registered user can publish drafts to the site.
Just Comments
I allow users to post comments on my blog. I think this is the most popular form on a wordpress site for user generated content.
User-submitted topics for posts
Usually reader feels no feedback loop that he can influence blog’s choice of topics.
This can be slowly overturned (into great source of topics and suggestions) by using comments and/or dedicated feedback channels (such as Skribit) as basis for posts.