WordPress User Roles Explained

If you’re collaborating with multiple authors, working with editorial staff, or requiring subscribers to create user accounts in order to comment, an understanding of the WordPress user roles is essential. This video will help you sort out your options by explaining the permissions associated with each role, and demonstrating how the WordPress administrative interface changes depending on a user’s role.

The video covers the current standard WordPress roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber. Along the way, I walk you through each of the roles showing you what the WordPress admin area looks like to users who are assigned each of these roles.

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14 thoughts on “WordPress User Roles Explained”

  1. Thank you for this informative video on WordPress User Roles as well as the entire series. I am a new WordPress admin and these videos are the first resource that I think of when I need to learn about functionality.

  2. this article (and video) is exactly what i have been looking for. i am going to be teh administrator of a blog, with several authors, and this tells me exactly how to administer it.

    many thanks

  3. That’s so much for the video tutorial. I was searching for the meaning of contributor because I have so many of them and wondering should I delete them all. You explained the five types of users very well.

  4. Your description of the 5 user roles seems to focus only on posts. What about capabilities at each level as it relates to pages?

  5. Hi Iris,
    It’s the same for posts and pages. Users who have access to one will have access to both.

  6. Excellent tutorial on this subject, now makes perfect sense to me, thank you for providing this.

  7. Hi Kirk

    I want someone to have Editor capabilities plus be able to add tags and categories – is this possible without giving them full administrator status?

    Thanks

    Gillian

  8. Both quick and very clear, Kirk. Thank you. I especially liked that you showed the admin panel for each user role – great visual reinforcement of the text.

    FYI – my screen blacked out on the Subscriber screen, about 7 minutes in. Tried reloading and refreshing but it happened again. Present in both full screen and regular. It miight be my PC, but thought I’d let you know as it’s not happened to me before.

    Linda

  9. Thanks for the bug report Linda. Looks like there was a problem exporting the updated video. I’ll be posting a new one shortly.

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