WordPress Roles and User Management
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 8:36 am
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wordpress user and role management
As a website manager, you may be forced to do everything yourself: install plugins , manage site settings, create content, and moderate comments.
This approach can become tiresome over time. Luckily, WordPress comes to our aid with a feature known as user roles , which allows you to create and assign roles and permissions to specific WordPress users , so you can delegate the workload.
As an administrator you will have full control over usa phone number data user management .
In this post, we look at WordPress roles and user management, give an overview of each role, and look at the plugins you can use to manage users and roles on your website. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents view
WordPress Role Types
To control what users have access to, WordPress uses a role system. There are five main WordPress roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber, each with their own privileges and permissions.
WordPress Role Permissions
WordPress Roles : Administrator
In a WordPress installation this is the most important and unrestricted user role.
WordPress site administrators can add new users, edit and delete existing users, install new plugins, themes and make changes to website settings. They can write and publish new posts, edit and delete draft and published posts.
This role is often (but not always) covered by the site manager who can thus have full control over it, both from a technical point of view and from that of the published contents.
However, this does not mean that other user roles do not have the ability to make some changes.
As you might guess, it’s a good idea to limit the number of administrators to the bare minimum.
If you happen to grant this role to someone other than yourself, be sure to remove the account once the work is done.
Read Also: 4 WordPress User Registration Plugins
WordPress Roles : Editor
As the name suggests, anyone with the Editor role on WordPress has almost full control over the website pages and post content.
WordPress users with this role can add, edit, publish, and delete posts on the website, including those added by other users (such as authors and contributors).
Any aspect of the site that is not content-related cannot be changed by editors, or any user role below them.
WordPress Roles : Author
Author role permissions concern the creation and publication of your own content.
Authors can add, edit, publish, and delete their own posts (but not those of other contributors).
Unlike an editor, an author cannot moderate comments but can only view them.
WordPress Roles : Contributor
This role is widely used on websites that use and publish user-submitted content, it is the perfect role for guest bloggers.
You can write and edit your own posts but you cannot publish them. These must first be approved by the site administrator.
It also does not have permissions to upload media files (unlike all the roles already seen) and moderate comments.
WordPress Roles : Subscriber
This is the role with the most limited permissions, it has access to WordPress but only to its own user profile and no other areas of the backend.
Subscribers can only change their password.
This role is very useful if you want to require WordPress users to log in to read restricted content or comments.
Additional WordPress Roles
When installing certain plugins, new WordPress roles may appear in addition to the 5 listed by default.
If you use WooCommerce , for example, you will have noticed the existence of two new types of users:
Shop Manager : can manage your e-commerce products;
Customer : is the customer who completes a purchase or registration on your online store and has the same permissions as the Subscriber.
By installing the Yoast SEO plugin instead , two other types of WordPress users will appear:
SEO Manager – has full access to all Yoast features;
SEO Editor – Cannot change Yoast options, but can edit posts and use plugin features.
wordpress user and role management
As a website manager, you may be forced to do everything yourself: install plugins , manage site settings, create content, and moderate comments.
This approach can become tiresome over time. Luckily, WordPress comes to our aid with a feature known as user roles , which allows you to create and assign roles and permissions to specific WordPress users , so you can delegate the workload.
As an administrator you will have full control over usa phone number data user management .
In this post, we look at WordPress roles and user management, give an overview of each role, and look at the plugins you can use to manage users and roles on your website. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents view
WordPress Role Types
To control what users have access to, WordPress uses a role system. There are five main WordPress roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber, each with their own privileges and permissions.
WordPress Role Permissions
WordPress Roles : Administrator
In a WordPress installation this is the most important and unrestricted user role.
WordPress site administrators can add new users, edit and delete existing users, install new plugins, themes and make changes to website settings. They can write and publish new posts, edit and delete draft and published posts.
This role is often (but not always) covered by the site manager who can thus have full control over it, both from a technical point of view and from that of the published contents.
However, this does not mean that other user roles do not have the ability to make some changes.
As you might guess, it’s a good idea to limit the number of administrators to the bare minimum.
If you happen to grant this role to someone other than yourself, be sure to remove the account once the work is done.
Read Also: 4 WordPress User Registration Plugins
WordPress Roles : Editor
As the name suggests, anyone with the Editor role on WordPress has almost full control over the website pages and post content.
WordPress users with this role can add, edit, publish, and delete posts on the website, including those added by other users (such as authors and contributors).
Any aspect of the site that is not content-related cannot be changed by editors, or any user role below them.
WordPress Roles : Author
Author role permissions concern the creation and publication of your own content.
Authors can add, edit, publish, and delete their own posts (but not those of other contributors).
Unlike an editor, an author cannot moderate comments but can only view them.
WordPress Roles : Contributor
This role is widely used on websites that use and publish user-submitted content, it is the perfect role for guest bloggers.
You can write and edit your own posts but you cannot publish them. These must first be approved by the site administrator.
It also does not have permissions to upload media files (unlike all the roles already seen) and moderate comments.
WordPress Roles : Subscriber
This is the role with the most limited permissions, it has access to WordPress but only to its own user profile and no other areas of the backend.
Subscribers can only change their password.
This role is very useful if you want to require WordPress users to log in to read restricted content or comments.
Additional WordPress Roles
When installing certain plugins, new WordPress roles may appear in addition to the 5 listed by default.
If you use WooCommerce , for example, you will have noticed the existence of two new types of users:
Shop Manager : can manage your e-commerce products;
Customer : is the customer who completes a purchase or registration on your online store and has the same permissions as the Subscriber.
By installing the Yoast SEO plugin instead , two other types of WordPress users will appear:
SEO Manager – has full access to all Yoast features;
SEO Editor – Cannot change Yoast options, but can edit posts and use plugin features.