How to Manage users in WordPress
There’s nothing more complicated for webmasters than to manage their website users. If you fail to manage your website or eCommerce solution users correctly, they can inflict site-breaking damage and loosen up tight security protocols.
By reading this article, you will learn about how to manage users and the types of users in WordPress.
This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to WordPress, and will show you how to manage users.
Step 1 of 8
Firstly, click Users in the left margin.
Step 2 of 8
Then, click Add New.
Step 3 of 8
Enter a username and email address for the new user.
Step 4 of 8
Then enter the user’s first and last name.
Step 5 of 8
Enter and confirm a password.
Step 6 of 8
Then click Add New User. That’s it! The new user has been set up successfully.
Step 7 of 8
From here you can edit or delete users as well.
Step 8 of 8
When deleting a user, you must decide whether to delete all their content or assign it to another user. The user we just created has now been deleted.
Types of Users and Permissions in WordPress
WordPress uses a concept of Roles, designed to give the site owner the ability to control what users can and cannot do within the site. A site owner can manage user access to some tasks. The tasks include writing and editing posts, creating Pages, defining links, creating categories, moderating comments, managing plugins, managing themes, and managing other users, by assigning a specific role to each of the users.
There are four default roles that you can assign to people on your site: Site Admin/Client, Editor, Author, and Contributor.
Site Administrator or Client
This is the highest-ranking role within a WordPress website and the role for the site owners. In short: Admins control everything that goes on.
Specifically, administrators have the ability to add, edit, or delete website pages, along with all WordPress plugins and themes. It is the administrator who adds other WordPress users to their website, determines their roles, and continues to manage them.
Moreover, administrator status delivers complete website control, so it’s important that if other users are made into admins, they’re fully trusted.
Editor
Editors poccess full reign over the content sections of a WordPress website.
These users may add, modify, delete, and publicly publish posts on a website, regardless of who created the content. Essentially acting as content moderators, editors have full control over the comments sections of a site as well.
However, editors are not able to perform administrative tasks such as managing plugins, themes, or other WordPress users.
Author
Authors are content creators that freely write and publish posts to a website.
Unlike editors, users assigned the role of author are only able to adjust content they’ve created in the first place. This means one author will not have the ability to change posts written by others. However, an author can still edit, or even delete, their own posts after they have been published.
With these limited permissions, assigning WordPress users as authors allows valuable content creation with little risk to your website’s operations.
Contributor
Contributors have the ability to write and edit new posts but remain unable to actually publish the content they create.
Similar to authors, setting WordPress users under the role of the contributor is a great way to generate new content. Plus, the added requirement for an admin or editor to review and publish the post themselves ensures that nothing unwanted, or of low quality, is ever made publicly viewable on the website.
However, it’s worth noting that contributors are unable to upload files to a website. This prevents them from adding images and the like to their posts, so an editor’s touch-ups will often be required.
Subscriber
Subscribers do not have any control inside your WordPress website, except for the ability to edit their user profile.
This user role is versatile and applied in a variety of ways depending on the website type. As mentioned earlier, some websites let their subscribers view specific pages of content that are hidden from non-subscribed users. Many websites also restrict the ability to leave comments from general visitors, and require subscribers to sign-up for the privilege.
A fantastic user role for stimulating a website community, weeding out unwanted visitors, and getting to know your audience better.
