One of the under used features of your WordPress.com hosted blog is the Request Feedback feature on your posts.
This feature can be invaluable if you are writing a long post and you want to get a second opinion, need it sense checking, proofreading or if you are dealing with some facts and you want to make sure your recollection of them is correct.
So where is the Request Feedback option hidden on your blog?
Actually it is in plain sight on your blog and just one of those buttons you never press.
So what do you do?
Well it is as simple as you would imagine, you write your post save it as a draft then press the button. When you press the button this window will open up below the main body of your draft post.
All you do is enter the E-mail address(es) of who you want to get feedback from and press send request. As you can see from the screen grab above there are a couple of other options, you can customise the feedback request before you send it, this is hand if you are sending to someone not familiar with WordPress, or you can just grab the link to share so you can send via your own E-mail, post to Twitter or whatever.
Once you have sent the request from your blog the person who you sent it to will get an E-mail with some links in. The links are personal to each person so you can track who has said what about your draft post.
All they need to do is click on the link and they will be taken to the feedback page on your blog post. They will see your post on the right hand side of the screen and the feedback form on the left.
As soon as anyone leaves you feedback on the post you will get an E-mail sent to the address associated with your blog, the E-mail will have a link to the feedback. All you need to do is follow the link in the E-mail or just go back to your draft post, if the feedback window isn’t open below your post, just press the button again and you will see your feedback listed.
Along with the feedback there are two other links for each person you have requested feedback from, a link to get their feedback link, so if they have lost it you can click this and get it for them again, and also a revoke access link, this will do exactly what it says it will revoke their access to leave feedback, you can use this if you have closed your post to feedback or if you mistakenly sent a request to the wrong E-mail address or any number of other reasons.
WordPress page on Request Feedback
Mike Rawlins
Away from Talk About Local I take photos, fly my quadcopter and walk my two Beagles.
If I'm not doing any of the above then you'll find me volunteering at my local RNLI station as a press officer.
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This is a fantastic feature of WordPress in my opinion. Do you know if there is a plugin that will replicate this feature in self-hosted wordpress blogs?
Well, seriously, I have never given a thought to it! Thanks a lot for the info! 🙂
I have used this feature for the first time. My editor does not have a WordPress account but is receiving a request to login when she follows the link that she got in the email. The same happened to me when I added my other email addresses to the Request Feedback tool. How do I get around the login if you do not have an account?
Frustratingly, this isn’t available for self-hosted blogs. Boo.
It is. You can get the plugin from: https://github.com/Automattic/writing-helper
Looks like it also needs the Share A Draft Plugin installed.
Enjoy!