Have you ever hired a team member or contract and just handed them full admin access to your WordPress site? It’s the quick option, but it’s a bit like giving someone the keys to your entire house when they only needed the garage.
The safer approach is built right into WordPress. User roles and permissions let you control exactly what each person can do, whether they’re writing posts, tweaking settings, or handling customer orders.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll explain each WordPress user role and its permissions, plus show you how to customize roles to match your team’s needs.
Here’s everything we’ll cover in this guide:
- What Are WordPress User Roles and Permissions?
- How to Add a New WordPress User With the Right Role
- How to Customize WordPress Roles u0026 Capabilities
- How to Create a Custom WordPress User Role
- WordPress Security u0026 User Role Best Practices for a Multi-Author Site
- FAQs About WordPress Roles and Permissions
What Are WordPress User Roles and Permissions?
In WordPress, a user role is a labeled bundle of capabilities, which are the individual permissions that control what someone can do on your website. Assigning a role hands someone a pre-set list of what they can touch.
WordPress comes with these built-in user roles:
- Subscriber – Can manage their own profile and read content. They can’t make any changes to your website. This is the default role for new user registrations and membership sites.
- Contributor – Can write posts and save them as drafts for review, but they can’t publish posts, upload media files, or edit published content. This role works well for guest bloggers.
- Author – Can write, upload media, and publish their own posts. They can also delete their own published posts, but they can’t edit other users’ content or moderate comments. This is the right role for a trusted staff writer.
- Editor – Can publish, edit, and delete any posts or pages on the website, including content created by other users. They can also moderate comments and manage categories and tags, but they can’t install plugins, change settings, or manage user accounts. This role works well for a managing editor.
- Administrator – Has complete control over a single WordPress website, including plugins, themes, settings, and user accounts. This role should only be given to site owners or people you trust completely.
- Super Admin (Multisite only) – Has full control over all websites in a WordPress multisite network, including plugins, themes, and user management. This role is for the person managing the entire network.
Need a quick way to compare WordPress user roles and permissions? Click on our infographic below:
We recommend choosing the lowest level of access that works for your needs. For example, you should avoid giving new users the Editor or Administrator role unless they truly need it.
Custom User Roles Added by Different WordPress Plugins
Beyond the built-in roles, popular WordPress plugins can add their own custom user roles and capabilities.
A few of the most common:
- WooCommerce – Adds a ‘Customer’ role for shoppers who register an account, plus a ‘Shop Manager’ role that can run the store without full administrator access.
- Membership plugins – Tools like MemberPress and others add their own member tiers, so paying members can reach protected content without any editing permissions.
- SEO plugins – Tools like AIOSEO or Yoast add ‘SEO Manager’ and ‘SEO Editor’ roles, so you can delegate SEO work without full site access.
How to Add a New WordPress User With the Right Role
First, go to Users » Add New User in your WordPress dashboard, then enter the user’s username, email address, and name. You can create a password yourself or let WordPress generate a secure one for you.
Next, scroll down to the ‘Role’ dropdown menu, select the appropriate user role, and click ‘Add User.’
WordPress will then email the new user a link to set their own password, along with a link to log in to your website.
Keep in mind that these steps only cover users you add yourself.
If you allow open registration, then anyone who signs up gets whatever role is set under ‘New User Default Role’ at Settings » General. Keep that on Subscriber so that an open signup form never puts a stranger on a higher role.
Changing an existing user’s role also works with a dropdown menu.
At Users » All Users, click the ‘Edit’ link under the person you want to update. Then, choose their new role from the ‘Role’ dropdown menu and click ‘Update User’ at the bottom of the page to save the change.
How to Customize WordPress Roles & Capabilities
The default WordPress user roles work well for most websites, but there may be times when you need more control over what users can do.
For example, you might want an Author to be able to edit posts without being able to delete the published ones or allow Contributors to upload media files.
The easiest way to customize WordPress user roles and permissions without writing code is to use a free plugin like Members. We recommend this method because it gives you a simple visual interface for managing capabilities. It also supports custom roles created by other plugins and includes all of its features for free.
First, install and activate the plugin. See our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for details.
Once activated, you’ll see a new ‘Members’ menu in your WordPress admin area. Go to Members » Roles, then click the ‘Edit’ link under the role you’d like to change, such as ‘Author.’
Select the permissions you want to grant or remove.
If you want to change your own role or the Administrator role, make sure to keep one Administrator account untouched and test the change on a spare account or a staging site first. Removing a core permission like managing settings from a role that you use can lock you out of parts of the dashboard, so it’s safer to try it somewhere you can undo it.
Once you’re done, click ‘Update’ to save your changes.
How to Create a Custom WordPress User Role
If the built-in WordPress user roles don’t meet your needs, then you can create your own custom role. This is useful if you want to give someone access to specific tasks without granting them too many permissions.
To create a custom role, go to Members » Add New Role and enter a name, such as “Virtual Assistant.”
Next, select the capabilities you want to give that role by checking the appropriate boxes, then click ‘Add Role’ to save.
Your new custom role will then appear in the list of user roles whenever you add a new user or edit an existing one.
Note: For developers, WordPress also exposes add_role(), add_cap(), and remove_cap() functions for programmatic role and capability management. See the WordPress Plugin Developer Handbook for details.
For example, this snippet creates a Virtual Assistant role, then adjusts its capabilities:
// Create a custom role with two starter capabilities
$role = add_role( 'virtual_assistant', 'Virtual Assistant', array( 'read' => true, 'edit_posts' => true ) );
// Add or remove individual capabilities on that role later
$role->add_cap( 'upload_files' );
$role->remove_cap( 'delete_posts' );
WordPress Security & User Role Best Practices for a Multi-Author Site
The golden rule in security is to always use the least privilege necessary. Give each team member the smallest role that lets them do their job.
Here are more ways to manage WordPress user permissions:
- Keep Administrator accounts to a minimum. Ideally, just one or two. Avoid making new team members administrators by default. If an admin account is compromised, then your entire site could be at risk.
- Audit your user list regularly. Remove accounts that are no longer needed, because old or inactive accounts are an easy way for hackers to get in.
- Require strong authentication on privileged accounts. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on every Editor and Administrator account. Passkeys are an even stronger option that’s becoming the new standard.
- Don’t share logins. Give each person their own account so you can see who made changes and quickly remove access if someone leaves the team. Shared accounts make it impossible to track activity.
- Keep an activity log. One account per person only helps if you can actually see what each person did, so install an activity log plugin to record logins, post edits, role changes, and plugin or settings changes. Our guide to the best WordPress activity log plugins compares options so you can choose the right fit.
FAQs About WordPress Roles and Permissions
Why can’t my contributor upload images?
Contributors don’t have the upload_files capability by default. You have two options:
- Promote them to Author. Authors have full upload access.
- Grant the capability. Use the Members plugin to add the
upload_filescapability to the Contributor role.
How do I limit authors’ ability to edit published posts?
By default, Authors can edit their own live posts (including after publish). To remove this ability, use the Members plugin to deny the edit_published_posts capability to the Author role. Authors will still be able to edit their drafts but not published posts.
How can I accept guest posts without providing WordPress admin access?
Assign each guest writer a Contributor role in WordPress. This lets them log in, write posts, and submit drafts for your review, without the ability to publish, upload media, or reach your admin settings.
If you’d rather not create user accounts in WordPress, then a front-end form plugin is the way to go and is often used by top publications. It lets guest writers submit posts from a page on your site, with no login needed.
Form plugins like WPForms or Gravity Forms both let you build a form that creates a draft post assigned to an admin account for review and publishing.
What if I accidentally lock myself out of the admin area?
Don’t worry, this is almost always recoverable. If you still have a second Administrator account, log in with it and set your own role back to Administrator at Users » All Users. Click ‘Edit’ under your name, pick ‘Administrator’ from the ‘Role’ dropdown, and click ‘Update User’.
If you don’t have another admin login, ask a teammate who does to change your role from that same screen.
If no one can log in as an Administrator at all, the fix has to happen at the database or hosting level, so the easiest path is to ask your host’s support team to restore your access.
We hope this guide has helped you learn more about WordPress user roles and permissions. For more tips, see our guide to WordPress security best practices, or our pick of the best WordPress user registration plugins.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Oyatogun Oluwaseun Samuel
This is a great article. very simple and easy to understand. I want to ask that is there no way one can add user that has more attribute than what is currently available on registration? Let’s say you want to add users that you need to know their “Age” or “Date of Birth” is there no way one can go about it.
WPBeginner Comments
In this case yo will likely want to customize the user registration. Check out this guide on how to add fields to the user sign-up form: https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/plugins/how-to-add-additional-user-profile-fields-in-wordpress-registration/
Mrteesurez
This is a detail article that nailed out all what user roles entail and give best practices to assign each to specific users.
My question:
By default, Does a contributor role can see an admin bar ?
I know of athour role.
WPBeginner Support
Unless you disable it for the user role, all user roles would see the admin bar when logged in.
Admin
Jiří Vaněk
I need to add a user to the website who will only have specific rights to what he can do on the website and what he must not have access to. Thank you for the instructions on how to create exactly such a user in WordPress. It saved me a lot of time looking for instructions on how to achieve this.
Muhammad Afzal Qureshi
Very nice explain in detail, I have a great experience after reading out.
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our article helpful!
Admin
Waqar
Your blog is really awesome, especially when ever I need to learn something about WordPress in deep dive.
WPBeginner Support
Glad you find our content helpful!
Admin
Jen
Hi WPB, how many “admin” roles can a website have? On my site, the original admin has full rights. But new admin usernames don’t. Is that normal?
WPBeginner Support
You can have as many admin users as you like on a WordPress site, if you do not have the default admin privileges then either a plugin may have modified the privileges as the most common reason.
Admin
Sam
Hi – I’m wondering if I can set a default for subscribers that doesn’t allow them access to the dashboard. I have subscribers through a free online course. I want to automatically eliminate the dashboard access so I don’t have to manually uncheck the box “Show Toolbar when viewing site ” Is there a way to do that?
WPBeginner Support
If you only want to hide the admin bar then we have a guide below that for hiding it:
wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-disable-wordpress-admin-bar-for-all-users-except-administrators
We also have a guide for redirecting users after they log into your site below that can help achieve what you’re looking for:
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/plugins/how-to-redirect-users-after-successful-login-in-wordpress/
Admin
Tammy
What role is suggested if you want someone to be able to view/download the analytics of a woocommerce site but not be able to change and/or update the content of the site otherwise? Do the basic roles cover that or is that a custom role?
WPBeginner Support
You would likely need to create a custom role for that functionality
Admin
LDB
Why do all articles on user permissions for WordPress never talk about what can be done with ‘pages’?. Seems like such a glaring omission from these articles. Am I missing something? Why do no articles not give info about permission related to building and editing pages?
WPBeginner Support
If you take a look at the infographic we cover which roles can modify pages
Admin
Traci
I am building a website in wordpress for a company. They want a dedicated page for sales or specials but they want to be the one’s handling updating that page each week. Can I give them permission only to post pictures and write add information for the sale items?
WPBeginner Support
It sounds like you would want to set them as the author role and set them as the author of that page.
Admin
Harish
Is there any limitation for user roles count?
WPBeginner Support
No, but you would want to ensure you are not adding roles for every user normally as multiple users can use the same role.
Admin
Maame
Hi,
Is it possible to customize the role of a shop manager? I would like to make some features accessible to them
WPBeginner Support
Yes, we cover the default roles in this guide but more roles can be added or modified
Admin
DannyO
Great writeup. Very close to what I was searching for.
Mine is a bit different,
I have a custom made plugin which I want to assign someone to manage the role. He needs to be entering data on a daily basis in dashboard of this custom plugin. But under the Type-Specific Capabilities, I dont see the name of this plugin. How can I achieve this then, when I cant see the custom plugin name?
WPBeginner Support
You would want to reach out to the plugin’s creator for what permissions are required to be able to use your plugin.
Admin
Katherine
Hi! I work for a site and I’m was assigned Editor. But for some reason, I can’t delete drafts, published articles, or media from Gallery that aren’t mine. The Trash/Delete option just isn’t anywhere on-screen. Is there anything I can do?
WPBeginner Support
You would want to reach out to the admin of the site to ensure there haven’t been any changes to the permissions for your role.
Admin
luka sheklashvili
Hi,
We have a website where is possible to buy food
We have customers and also we have accountant
which premmision will be best for accountant to do his/her work
we are using woocomerce platforme of ecomerce
WPBeginner Support
You would want to take a look at the default WooCommerce roles added and you can add or modify the role depending on the access you want to give.
Admin
Kshitij Gajam
Hi,
Thanks for the great article! it is neatly structured and presented.
I would like to know is it possible to restrict access up to 3 blogs for users who dont subscribe to the website. Only after subscribing they get full access. If yes, how can I do it? Is there a plug in or I have to code?
WPBeginner Support
For what you’re looking for, you would want to take a look at membership plugins below and you would need to reach out to the support for what you’re wanting to use for if they have that available.
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/plugins/5-best-wordpress-membership-plugins-compared/
Admin
Felicia Kay
I have recently started a new job with a local law firm and we have purchased a form building tool for our WordPress site. My role permissions have been set to Editor, am I able to access it as an editor to build the new form(s) we need?
WPBeginner Support
It would depend on the specific plugin. If you reach out to the plugin’s support they should let you know what permissions are needed for using the plugin
Admin
lynda
I have been a WordPress user for many years and decided several months ago to combine two blogs. At that time I added the user name of the other blog as a user on my primary blog. Now that second user appears as the author of posts. It appears as the writer of replies to comments. How do I change this?
WPBeginner Support
If you do not want your additional user to be on the site you can delete that user and attribute all of their content to your a different user
Admin
Maude
Hi, do you know if there is a way to create a user who will have access to everything, but can edit nothing. I want to show someone how my website is built so we can talk about it, but I want to be sure he can’t mess anything up.
WPBeginner Support
That would heavily depend on your site and the plugins you are using, you may want to send screenshots or share screens for what you are wanting.
Admin
Jerusha
Hi, I have just started my blog. And installed a new theme. My site is not even live yet … it still had the ‘coming soon” page, however today I discovered I have 308 subscribers under the ‘user’s title on my dashboard… how is that possible?
WPBeginner Support
Your site may be allowing user registration, for more on that you would want to take a look at our article here:
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/beginners-guide/how-to-allow-user-registration-on-your-wordpress-site/
Admin
Imran
And what if a disgruntled author goes to “edit” her post and then removes all the content and then click on “update” button.
This would be a rare case but possible even if you disallow her to “delete published” posts.
WPBeginner Support
If you are concerned about that, you could disable the ability to edit published posts
Admin
Segun Wonda
Hello, thank you for this great article.
I have a question please.
After modifying my author role to stop author from deleting their own post with this plugin, will the modification still be active when I disable or delete the plugin?
WPBeginner Support
Yes, your changes should still be active when you remove the plugin.
Admin
sam thandi
i was searching for one of your articles in which you showed how to create user like Editorial Staff can you please give me link to that article. thanks
WPBeginner Support
It would depend on what you mean. If you’re wanting more editorial options you could take a look at our article here: https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/plugins/how-to-improve-your-editorial-workflow-in-multi-author-wordpress-blogs/
If you wanted to hide the author’s name we have our article here:
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/wp-themes/how-to-remove-author-name-from-wordpress-posts/
Admin
Pablo
I can see that there are more user categories now, in addition to the 5 mentioned here. Participant, Moderator, Spectator… Cant see the permissions for these! Any ideas where to find them?
WPBeginner Support
If you have other plugins that add user roles those would likely be why you have the extra roles
Admin
Infoneter
Nice and useful information. thanks
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome
Admin
Kirk Bullen
Great post.. And great site. It’s my ‘Go To’ site, for everything I need, and have learnt so much.
What I want to do, is create a Movie Mod User. So that they can Add Movies/Shows. But I don’t want to give all Admin permissions. They would only require to use the Plugin used to add these Movies/Shows. All it.would require them to do, is use the Import Movie/Show. Then once added, have the ability to edit the Movie/Show. So that they can add the Movie/Show Collection/Genre.
Is there a plugin available that you know of, that gives permissions to use selected Plugin Admin abilities? I have tried Editor User. But it doesnt show the ‘Import’ option.
Any advise is greatly appreciated.
WPBeginner Support
It would depend on what you are using to import the movies, if it is a plugin you should be able to reach out to the plugin’s support for what permission is required to import the movie/show.
Admin
Steveo
Users >> Capabilities does not exist. Got another idea?
WPBeginner Support
You may want to ensure that the plugin was activated successfully on your site.
Admin
sultan haider
I have school chains in multiple cities and i want to each school have
their login and password and add students in own schools records and
admin have access all schools records.
Its possible with wordpress or not.
WPBeginner Support
It is possible but you would likely need to have a custom plugin created to do something that specific.
Admin
Tony
Suggest you use multisite capability, each school can have their own subdomain.
Emzee
How to check what permissions I have as a user on wordpress site please? Sorry am a beginner?
WPBeginner Support
Hi Emzee,
Using the capability manage enhanced you can see what permissions a user has on your site.
Admin
shubhangi
Great post now i can ad more author without confusion thanks friend
Mithilesh Yadav
How to send notification mail by Guest User in Wordpress
Marianne
Good day!
Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering is there also a date stamp when the user has registered?
regards,
Kagan
i am using wholesale plugin. we want open manuel order from order woocommerce dashboard
But when i add product wholesale prices are not shown. is it possible to make this wtih user roles plugins. if so which one should we use
thank you
chintan
Hi i want make a two type of login page first is customer and second is Service provider (like a amazon seller).
service provider uplode it’s services , and it can edit it’s services.
how i do that?
beth
Hi. I created some new users but they have yet to receive their email notification. How long does it take for that to be generated?
LaVonne Carlson
Is it possible to setup a user with permission to edit only a particular page? I’m running a website for a Boy Scout troop, and I want the boys to be able to upload and rearrange photos on the gallery page, but not make any other changes to the site.
Gulfam
I’ve also problem related to your question, want to allow user only on specific plugin and page to post things.
Fahad Rafiq
How can we remove underscore from users name in wordpress users tab?
Like if name entered is First Second, it will appears as First_Second.
Any fix.?
John
Whenever my writers try to past an iframe into their stories it vanishes when saving. From a little bit of testing this occurs up to Editor level which also gives publishing ability — which I don’t want them to have.
I’ve got both adminimize and user role editor installed. Staff writers have a custom user role editor setting of Staff Writers.
How can I overcome this limitation on inserting iframes?
Thank you
WPBeginner Support
Hey John,
The capability to add iframes is part of unfiltered_html capability. However, allowing user roles the ability to add unfiltered html is too risky and not recommended. You should look for other ways to manage this. For example, if this iframe embed is from a third party service provider, they they might already have a WordPress plugin.
Admin
John
Thank you. Ordinarily I would agree. But these are inhouse writers who need this capability. The most common is Facebook video embeds getting the iframe from Embedded Video & Live Video Player.
We also embed YouTube and other video in the body of the stories often and this explains why the html table that has been prepared for them to use by simply replacing the URL doesn’t work.
The rest of what the different level of access – editor, copy editor, photo editor, contributor, and staff writer can see and access is regulated using adminimize and user role editor.
What is the risk of giving unfiltered html access to inhouse staff?
Thank you
WPBeginner Support
Hey John,
With unfiltered html capability, users will have the ability to add malicious code which could get executed as soon as the post content is saved.
John
Ok. Thank you. That won’t be an issue in this instance. But very useful to know.
Akhil
Is it possible to delete a post by another author.?
WPBeginner Support
Hey Akhil,
If you are an administrator or editor on that site, then yes you can delete posts created by another author.
Admin
Jake
I am not getting a lot of “email subscribers” via the subscribe widget to my blog but I do receive a lot of “New user registration” notifications from WP of people that are set up as their user role as “subscribers” and so my WP admin has a list of these people and their email addresses.
As far as I can tell, when I create a new post, no one with the user role “Subscriber” is being notified. Why else does WP give me their email address if not to notify them? Perhaps I am doing something wrong? How do I notify the hundreds and hundreds of people in this list?
WPBeginner Support
Hi Jake,
Please see our guide on how to add email subscriptions to your WordPress blog.
Admin
Imtiaz Ahmed
hi, I have many Editors on my website, how I can strict, I mean editors are not able to edit Admin post. I want this on my website
Regards:
Imtiaz Ahmed
WPBeginner Support
Hey Imtiaz,
The editor user role gives users permission to edit any posts. You should change their user role to author or contributor. You can also edit permissions of a user role or create new user roles using plugins.
Admin
Gary Wicks
I have a question if I have 300 subscribers what does that mean? Does it mean people subscribed to make a comment? I have no idea where these came from as I only have a few actual comments posted. Does this mean they were all spammers that Akismet software rejected? So the comments did not show but they are all in my users list as subscribers to make comments?
Or is this rss feed or what is it?
Steve Root
The role attribute selection on my theme has both an Allow and a Deny column. If a particular attribute is only enabled when checked what is the purpose of the Deny column (twenty-sixteen)?
deppak
Hi there,
Great post!
I created a custom role cloning the “administrator”, is it possible for administrators to change between the two? I can see the administrator can change all others’ role, but can it change its own through the back-end dashboard/menu?
Thanks!
Anne Cohen
Hi. Thank you for the post! Very helpful, but one more question….
Can Contributor writers DELETE their articles when they’re published?
What about when they’re pending?
Let’s say they had a change of heart? I just noticed a contributor alter an article that I was already editing/pending. I didn’t think that was possible.
Abhiney
Hi,
I am facing issues with the user creation. I am looking to create an editor for my website but despite deactivating all plugins, changing passwords etc,for the new user – when I try to login in through the ‘New User’ credentials it says – “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.”
Can you please help.
Debbie N.
Can I give permission to use a backup plugin but not other plugins? I see you can add more capabilities but I can’t figure out how to set it up for that. Thanks for any help.
Obed Aikins
Hi, nice post, very useful. i’m a college student developing a site for publishing hostels information and also book into it using wordpress. i want to create custom agent/landlord roles in WP. please help
Stuart
Users with the subscriber user role can login to your WordPress site and update their user profiles. They can change their passwords if they want to. They cannot write posts, view comments, or do anything else inside your WordPress admin area.
This user role is particularly useful if you require users to login before they can read a post or leave a comment.
I don’t understand this. So if a subscriber is logged in can they or can’t they comment on a post?
WPBeginner Support
Yes they can comment on a post.
Admin
Alan Jordan
This was really helpful. Thank you.