WordPress Tips & Tricks – WordPress User Roles
WordPress is a robust content management system (CMS) that we build our sites on. WordPress allows the user to create and change content easily, but there are some tricks that are fun and helpful to know. This blog series will cover some things we think you should know. Feel free to contact us if you have a question or a topic you’d like to see covered in a future post!
If you have multiple people who will be creating content and editing your website, you may want to consider the different roles that users can have.
User roles are:
Subscriber
Contributor
Author
Editor
Administrator
All user permissions are cumulative, meaning the next level’s role has all the permissions of the previous level’s role, plus more. So the Editor role has all the permissions of the Subscriber, Contributor and Author roles, plus its own Editor roles.
The Subscriber role has very limited capabilities. They can create and maintain their profile, but they can’t write or publish articles.
Contributors can create and maintain a profile, edit posts, and delete their own posts. They cannot edit or delete published posts. This role would be a good choice if you have a guest blogger who will be writing blog posts but is not a part of your company.
Authors have all the same permissions as the Subscriber and Contributor roles, and they can also publish posts, delete published posts, and upload files.
Editors have all the same permissions as the Subscriber, Contributor and Author roles, and they can publish pages, delete pages, edit other’s posts and pages, delete other’s posts and pages, read private pages, delete private pages, manage categories, and moderate comments.
Finally, the Administrator has all the same permissions as the Subscriber, Contributor, Author and Editor, as well as being able to install, activate, edit update and delete plugins, create and delete users, delete themes, edit files, edit themes and theme options, export and import content, install, manage site options, edit and remove users, update themes and core WordPress version, and edit the Dashboard.
As you can see, there are different levels that are appropriate for many types of users on your site. Let us know if you have questions about which roles you want to assign to your users.