WordPress is considered as one of the most popular blogging platforms currently available. It comes with several different roles which allow the site owner to add users to the site with corresponding capabilities and restrictions. Let’s take a closer look at what these WordPress user roles are.
I’m A Solo Blogger
If you’re doing all of the writing in your blog, then you won’t need WordPress roles; you will only need two types of users – yourself and your readers who don’t need to log in to read your content. If this is the scenario you currently find yourself in, then this post might not be for you. However, there are a few things you should do:
- You should disable new user registration so that you can keep your blog tight and secure. You can do this by going to Dashboard -> Settings -> General and then uncheck the “anyone can register” option.
- You should edit and change the displayed name on the admin account to your own name. you can change this by going to Dashboard -> Users -> Edit the admin account -> complete the first and last name field, and then set your full name under the “Display name publicly as” option. This gives your blog a more personal look and feel to it compared to a robotic looking Admin.
I’d Like to Add Users to My Blog
With WordPress, when you add a user to your blog, you can assign that user a particular role. There are five roles for users: subscriber, editor, contributor, author, and administrator. Each of these roles has a different level of permission as to what they can do on your site.
This post will discuss all of the different WordPress user roles and their permissions. This list will start from the role that has the least privileges going up.
Assigning Roles to Your Blog
All new users you create in your WordPress blog are set as subscribers by default. The administrator will need to edit that user and assign it a role. You can do this by going to the dashboard -> users -> authors and users -> edit the required user -> and from the role drop down, choose the desired user level.
Subscriber
A subscriber is a WordPress role which can read your blog posts. This is pretty much the same as unregistered users who can drop by your blog anytime and read your posts. You might be thinking, so why do I need this role? The answer is so that you can control certain features such as:
- Leaving comments on your posts for spam control
- To view certain blog posts
- To view blogs which are set to Private so that they can be granted access
Contributor
The next role you can create with WordPress is the contributor.
Contributors are users who can read your blog posts, as well as create and edit posts from the WordPress dashboard. They can also delete posts from the blog, but only those which they have created themselves and those which have not been published yet.
One important thing about contributors is that they can create blog posts in draft, and they do not have the ability to publish these posts. There is a different user role for that.
Author
An author is like an upgraded version of the contributor, as they have all of the permissions a contributor has, and they can publish their own posts, delete their own published posts, and upload files so that they can include images or videos in their posts.
The author role can control their content, but posts created by other authors as well as contributor posts cannot be edited, but can be viewed and read.
Editor
The editor role has a site-wide permission. Editors, as its name suggests, have control over the content of other users and they can publish, delete, and create new posts. Editors also have the ability to create, edit, and delete pages, and they also have access to different posts as well as posts which are marked as private. Editors can see and access all posts, whether they are marked as public, private, or password protected.
Editors also have the ability to create categories, add blog roll link entries, create and amend new users, as well as moderate comments.
You should make sure to assign the role of editor to someone you trust, as they can control your blog. The only thing an editor cannot do is to edit the look of your blog. The role that can do that is called an…
Administrator
The administrator is the ultimate user role for a WordPress site. The administrator can do all of the roles mentioned above, and they can also change the theme of the blog, upload, install and activate plugins, edit users, and make changes to the look of the WordPress dashboard.
For the Administrator role, you should make sure to choose a very difficult password and also change the default login to something different than admin so that it will be impossible to hack.
Final Words on WordPress Roles
For blogs which have different people contributing posts to it, it would be best to maximize the use of roles, assign the minimum role needed for these people to get their job done. As the administrator, you will need to safeguard your password, perhaps not as much as your contributors do. Sure, you can trust your contributors but you should think several times before making anyone an administrator.
