WordPress is a complete environment. A complete content management tool that allows you to manage everything that you need to build and run a business; either product-based or service-based or simple blogger and marketers.
Since it’s not just a simple tool to be managed by just one person, therefore WordPress allows you to add a number of WordPress users with different roles. A team for your business or blog that gets access to your WordPress based on their role.
Each WordPress user has different access and authority, they all share different tasks (based on what you allow them) but they all share a common mission, that is the growth of your website.
So, let’s learn how to add new users to your WordPress, and what are access you can give them.
What Roles are Available?
By default, five WordPress roles for the new users are available in WordPress. However, with new plugins, new roles are available in the settings. The 5 default of them are:
1. Administrator:
Admin of WordPress has complete access to everything, such as posts, pages, comments, media, users, plugins, menus, widgets, and other customizations.
Don’t add any random person as admin. Add only trusted people because they can remove other admin delete content, post and change theme, or harm your website in other ways.
2. Editor
The Editor role of WordPress is not for writing content, rather managing content from all the authors. So, an editor has access to content from all the authors, which they can edit, delete, publish.
Not just posts, they have equal access to pages as well. An editor can also moderate comments.
3. Author
Author of the WordPress is responsible for content like posts and media files. They are not responsible for pages and other core settings. So an author has no access to those options.
Further, authors can also add a new post, edit, and even publish their post without admin or editor approval. However, they cannot edit, delete or publish writeups from the other authors.
4. Contributor
This user role is designed to accept posts contribution from guest authors and publishers. They have limited access, they can add new posts, edit but cannot publish them.
5. Subscribers
Subscribers do not have any access to the WordPress dashboard area, however, they can update their profile and read the content.
This role is useful for sites with login and membership features.
Note: In the case of multisite, you get the option of super admin as well, who can manage all sites while regular admin can manage just one site for which they hold the rights.
Also, as you add new plugins, you will have more options in the user roles setting area. For example, I have installed an SEO plugin and GiveWP (a donation plugin) which adds a few more user roles in my WordPress.
- SEO Editor
- SEO manager
- GiveWP Donar
- GiveWP Manager
- As GiveWP Accountant
- GiveWP Worker
If you install the WooCommerce plugin, you will get more user roles such as “Customer” and “Shop manager”.
How to Add a New User in WordPress?
Adding new users to WordPress is simple. You need an email from the users and in just 2 minutes the user can be added with whatever role you choose.
Let’s suppose you hired a writer for your website, and you want him/her to write down blogs or articles, and post them on WordPress with his/her name.
For such a user, the “Author” role will be most suitable. Let’s learn to add a new author in WordPress.
Note: You must be an Admin to add or delete users in WordPress
- Go to the “Users” menu in the vertical menu of WordPress.
2. Click on the “Add New” option. A panel asking for details of the new user will appear.
3. Enter the username (cannot be edited later), email, first and last name, and choose the role as “Author” (in this case) and generate a new password and click on “Add New User”.
Note: Tick mark “send user notification” to send email to the address informing them about their role with a reset password link, as shown below.
4. Author received an email with a reset link (lengthy link) and a login link which they can log in using the existing password.
As the user clicks on the reset link, they get a WordPress panel with a new password input area.
Enter the password (or generate one) and click on “Save“.
5. Once password reset is done. A screen asking for login will appear. Click on login, and it will ask you for the way to log in.
Click on “Log in with username and password“. Enter the details and proceed.
Final Words
After entering the password and username, the newly added user will be able to access the WordPress dashboard.
As an author, his/her dashboard will have fewer options as compared to admin. In the post section, they can view the post from the options but cannot edit it. The author can only edit their own blogs.
In this way, you can add more users to your WordPress and assign them different roles and grow your website to a new height.
I hope this article helped you to understand the users’ roles in WordPress. Don’t forget to update each newly added user on Gravatar. If they are added as author or contributor so that their author bio and image appears if Gravatar is set.
