User Roles Capabilities

User Roles & Capabilities

The administrator of a blog can assign a different role to each user; the assigned role determines what capabilities or tasks that user can perform.

WordPress 2 supports five roles:

• Subscriber is the lowest level role. A subscriber can only read the blog.

• Contributor can do what a Subscriber can do, as well as createbut not publishposts. Assign this role to someone you want to contribute content to the blog after approval.

• Author can do everything a Contributor can do, as well as upload files and publish posts.

• Editor can do everything an Author can do, plus edit posts and Pages, moderate comments, and modify categories and links (or bookmarks). Think of the Editor as the Administrator's helper.

• Administrator has complete control over the entire blog.

Table 1 shows how the WordPress capabilities are distributed among the roles.

Table 1. Roles and Capabilities for WordPress Users

Capability	Administrator	Editor	Author	Contributor	Subscriber
switch_themes
edit_themes
activate_plugins
edit_plugins
edit_users
edit_files
manage_options
import
moderate_comments
manage_categories
manage_links
unfiltered_html
edit_published posts
edit_others_posts
edit_pages
upload files
publish_posts
edit_posts
read

Warning!

• Do not assign the Administrator role to anyone who you either don't trust or who has a limited knowledge of WordPress. An Administrator can make drastic changes to a blog and its appearance!

Tips

• You can learn more about roles and capabilities in the WordPress Codex at codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities.

• The WordPress Codex lists an additional 11 capabilities, named level_0 through level_10. These capabilities apply to previous versions of WordPress and are supported for backwards compatibility.