Thread: my.lotro.com Help for Kinships

With all the exciting possibilities for players at my.lotro.com it can be a bit overwhelming for Kinship leaders to get a grip on all they can do with their new tools. Hopefully this thread will help get you pointed in the right direction so you can start taking advantage of my.lotro.com and all it has to offer!

A note before we start: All of this is geared towards Kinships but much of it also applies to individuals. Many of the tools described are also available on your personal pages.


Who Gets what?
The three main Kinship ranks have corresponding ‘ranks’ on your kinship blog. These are created when your Kinship data is pulled from the game servers. Members with the following ranks, or their equivalents, will receive the following my.lotro.com roles.

Leader = Admin
Officer = Editor
Member & Recruit = Contributor

Admin – The admin has complete control over all aspects of the Kinship blog. Admins can edit, approve, remove, post, or change the date/time stamp of any posts in the blog. You may also change the kinship profile and avatar.

The Admin can also change the permissions of any member of the kin in the Kinship Admin panel. You can add additional administrators, or take away posting rights on a per player basis.

Only Admins can see the full player list or add events to the Kinship Calendar. If a player has made their player name private, they will appear as anonymous and their characters will be listed immediately beneath. If they have made both their player name and character names private they will show as anonymous with no characters listed.

Editor – Can edit, post, and approve posts of other members of the kinship. Editors can also edit the Kinship Profile information and avatar as well as approve or disapprove comments. Editors Cannot see the user list, add or edit items on the calendar, or change user permissions.
Contributor – Can write and post to the kinship blog but must have their posts approved by either an Editor or an Administrator.

There are two additional roles that an administrator can assign to a member. These are unused by our current system, but you are free to use them if you like.

Subscriber – has no permissions. Can only read the blog

Author – Can write, edit, and approve their own articles, but not those of others.

Note: The permissions reside with the player account, not the character. So if you have characters in multiple kinships you will see multiple tabs in your administration panel. Each will have the appropriate permissions for your role in that kinship.

Kinship Admins can change the role of any member, or add new players who are not in your kin to your Kinship’s my.lotro.com page. Keep in mind any changes you make are not reflected in game. So changing a member to an Editor will not change them from member to officer in game.

However, the game is always authoritative. So promoting or demoting a member in game will change his role on my.lotro.com even if you have assigned them a different role, such as admin, via the Kinship administration panel. Additionally, when a member leaves your kinship all their permissions are removed from your Kinship’s my.lotro.com blog.

Admins can add any member of the my.lotro.com community to their blog permissions and assign them any level of access. This could be useful if two kinships have an alliance and wish to allow officers to cross post to each other’s my.lotro.com pages. Be aware, once you grant a member editor level permissions, they have the ability to add anything they want to your page! If you grant someone Admin rights, they can do anything you can do. Be very careful assigning editor and admin level rights!

RSS Widgets are available. If you run your own private forums you can add your forum’s RSS output to the widget and have your latest forum topics appear on your my.lotro.com page! This also works with the officialLOTRO forums as well. You can have multiple RSS feeds on your page if you wish.

Text widgets can be added to your page. These are handy for making link lists, contact information, or other fairly static information available to your members.

That should get you started. Enjoy!