Learn About WordPress User Roles

User Roles are an important feature in a WordPress site. If you are going to be managing your site yourself, you’ll want to learn about user roles.

A Role defines the tasks and permissions that users have on your website. If you have any issues with spam, limiting user access via User Roles is one way to control that.

These are the roles and a brief explanation:

  • Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features.
  • Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
  • Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
  • Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
  • Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
  • Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.

Super Admin would only be needed if you are enabling the Multisite feature. Super Admin has the capacity to administer every site in your Network. This tutorial will not delve into Multisite functions as that would need to be in another tutorial.

Administrators have full access to your website and can control every aspect of it. You would only want to give this access to people you fully trust, so try to limit the Administrator access for safety reasons.

Your Administrator account is created when your website is installed and is similar to a Super Admin user for single WordPress installations. It’s best not to give out the access details to your own Administrator account. If technicians need to visit your site due to issues, you can create a separate account for them and then remove it after they’re done.

Here is a list of all of the Administrator’s access:

  • activate plugins
  • delete others pages
  • delete others posts
  • delete pages
  • delete posts
  • delete private pages
  • delete private posts
  • delete published pages
  • delete published posts
  • edit dashboard
  • edit others pages
  • edit others posts
  • edit pages
  • edit posts
  • edit private pages
  • edit private posts
  • edit published pages
  • edit published posts
  • edit theme options
  • export
  • import
  • list users
  • manage categories
  • manage links
  • manage options
  • moderate comments
  • promote users
  • publish pages
  • publish posts
  • read private pages
  • read private posts
  • read
  • remove users
  • switch themes
  • upload files
  • update core
  • update plugins
  • update themes
  • install plugins
  • install themes
  • delete themes
  • delete plugins
  • edit plugins
  • edit themes
  • edit files
  • edit users
  • create users
  • delete users
  • unfiltered html

Editors are somewhat like Moderators in other sites. Perhaps you are familiar with that term. Editors can edit their own posts and also other people’s posts. Editors can’t change user settings or manage users. They mainly are responsible for content. Here’s a list of what they can do:

  • delete others pages
  • delete others posts
  • delete pages
  • delete posts
  • delete private pages
  • delete private posts
  • delete published pages
  • delete published posts
  • edit others pages
  • edit others posts
  • edit pages
  • edit posts
  • edit private pages
  • edit private posts
  • edit published pages
  • edit published posts
  • manage categories
  • manage links
  • moderate comments
  • publish pages
  • publish posts
  • read
  • read private pages
  • read private posts
  • unfiltered html
  • upload files

Authors can publish and manage their own posts. They have far less privileges than Editors but are still important to your site as they add content. Here’s a list of what an Author can do:

  • delete posts
  • delete published posts
  • edit posts
  • edit published posts
  • publish posts
  • read
  • upload files

Contributors are limited in their abilities. They can edit, read and delete posts but they can’t publish them. They still contribute to the content of the site and someone else would then publish the article.

Subscribers are people that subscribe to read your blog. They can manage their profile and read the articles. They can’t edit any content or contribute any. Still, don’t over look this group of people as the reason you have a blog is for people to read it.