I really like the idea of enabling on a per-post basis; it'll make it easier to "switch out" the bio when guest posts are entered.
Having to go through the steps of logging out of an admin role, logging in as a "blogger" role, and entering the entry is a lot of extra steps, especially for a multi-tasker who may also be doing other admin work in the site at the same time. Here's the scenario with two of my current clients, for example:
1) Office manager is also bookkeeper, so at any given time, she may be logged into the website to manage premium subscription users (site uses the Site Membership Pro plugin), sending out invoices (using Web Invoice Pro), or managing training events (Using Event Manager Pro), as well as reviewing commerce reports, etc.
She's now handling the blog entries, and starting to get more guest blog offers. If she's being pro-active, and pre-scheduling guest blogs (or blogs from the co-owner in the satellite office), having to log in and out every time isn't going to be an effective workflow, given all that she's already juggling.
2) Community resource site is primarily populated via guest posts; site owner already runs other businesses, and has a special-needs family, so taking the time to train 10-12 contributing authors to use the site just isn't in her agenda.
She is very specific in how she wants the content to appear, and so she or her assistant handles it themselves. However, she really does want to give author credit, so she manually adds the author bio - each and every time. Logging in and out for each contributing author, if she or her assistant are pre-populating content in advance (usually a week out, a different author each day) isn't optimal for her workflow either; they also post community events, help wanted ads, and manage advertising space.
I have yet to have a customer who uses the content templates effectively; I've found more confusion than clarity resulting from the process, and they abandon the effort shortly thereafter in favor of copying it in from an external doc - or I get a frantic e-mail/phone call, and have to log in and clean up the mess.
Bear in mind that I understand this issue from multiple perspectives: supporting these customers, accepting guest posts, and being a regularly contributing writer for two other sites. For one of those sites, I write 10 articles a month, so I'm set up to log in, write my articles, and my bio shows up, exactly as the new workflow allows with mojoPortal (love that!). For the other site, I'm on a six-week rotation, so I only send in an article for the site owner to convert according to her specs.
If you're willing to make this a per-post setting, a solution that I think would be terrific is to:
- keep the default "author bio" and see "show bio" checkbox for those who only have "blog author" rights;
- allow admins with admin/content admin rights to see the "show bio" checkbox, and a dropdown of all users who belong to the "blog author", "content admin", or "admin" roles, to be selected as "author". An author can be selected, and will be displayed when the post is published.
It would work with the workflow of someone already in the site, and maintain consistent formatting for the blog entries without the additional manual steps. A profile would still need to be created for the the guest posters, but that's a one-time thing per author.