Contributor login and user management

After I registered a "test" user and promoted the ID to Author I am trying to figure out how that now Registered Author can log onto the site and upload content.

Being new to Joomla it would seem that there must be a better way to manage users. I hope...and it is a stretch right now.... to provide content to a large community many of whom will be potential contributors. Any thoughts on who to manage a large user/contributor base.

Is there any World News II specific documentation? Thx