Bylines
Who appears as the author of a contribution in Ghost, and what the staff access token is for.
Every post needs an author in Ghost. The service never makes a contributor a staff user who can sign in; it offers two ways to put the right name on the post.
One byline per contributor (imported)
The first time a contributor starts a draft on your site, the service creates a Ghost user for them: a Contributor who is suspended from the moment they exist, with a name from the contributor's display name and an email address on a domain that cannot receive mail. A suspended user cannot sign in, cannot reset a password, and receives no mail; their author page and name render like any other author's.
Ghost offers only one way to create a user already suspended: a content import. Imports need an Administrator, which is why this option asks for the staff access token of a dedicated Administrator account. The service uses that token for the import, reading users, suspending or renaming the users it imported, and two read-only reads of a published post's referrers and page views for the analytics panel; nothing else. It never changes roles, passwords or the owner, and never touches the account the token belongs to.
Create the account for the service, not for a person
Invite a new Administrator named after the service, accept the invitation yourself, sign in as it once to copy its Staff access token, and keep its password in your password manager. It costs one staff seat on Ghost(Pro). Regenerating its token in Ghost means reconnecting the site with the new one.
One shared byline
Choose an existing Contributor user of your site, and every contribution is published under that name (for example "Sponsored content"). No staff access token is needed. We recommend suspending that user in Ghost so nobody can sign in as it.
Changing your mind
The site page shows every byline and its state. You can switch a site to a shared byline at any time, retry an import that failed, and rename an imported user in Ghost; the service re-reads the user before every post it writes.
When Ghost substitutes the owner
If Ghost cannot match the author the service sends, it silently assigns the post to the site owner instead. The service compares the answer with what it sent after every write and, if the author is not the byline, marks the submission and the byline as failed and tells you on the site page, so a sponsored post never quietly carries your name.