The six default WordPress user roles

Out of the box, WordPress includes six different user roles. Understanding each one is key if you want to protect your site and ensure your team works more effectively. Let’s take a look at each of these roles in turn.

We’ll also show you what the WordPress dashboard looks like from the perspective of each role.

1. Administrator

This is the role assigned to you when you create a website. The administrator is at the very top of the hierarchy (unless you’re running a Multisite installation, which we’ll discuss soon). In most cases, there is only one, and they are able to access all the functions of the WordPress backend.

Administrators are able to do everything. This user role can, in part:

• Create, edit, and delete any content
• Manage plugins and themes
• Edit code
• Delete other user accounts

Administrator is the most powerful user role and should rarely be assigned to any other account. If you give someone else this user role, you’re essentially giving them the keys to the castle. So be careful!

2. Editor

As the name of this user role suggests, an editor is generally responsible for managing content and thus has a high level of access. They can create, edit, delete, and publish both pages and posts – even those belonging to other users.

An editor can also:

• Moderate comments
• Manage categories and links

However, they cannot make site-wide changes such as adding plugins and themes or installing updates. Instead, they are responsible for overseeing the work of authors and contributors.

3. Author

An author has far fewer permissions than editors. They cannot edit pages and are unable to alter other users’ content. In addition, they lack any sort of administrative capabilities.

What they can do is create, edit, delete, and publish their own posts (and upload media files). This makes their role pretty clear – authors are responsible for creating content, and nothing more.

4. Contributor

The contributor role is essentially a stripped-down version of the author role. A contributor is only able to perform three tasks – reading all posts, as well as deleting and editing their own posts. This role is quite limited since it doesn’t enable users to publish posts or upload media files. However, it’s ideal for one-time and new content creators.

5. Subscriber

Subscribers have only one main capability and their WordPress dashboard is usually incredibly bare. They can read all posts on the site (as well as manage their own profiles). Normally, anyone can read posts without being assigned a role, so not all sites will use this option. However, it comes in handy for subscription-based sites, where you want to enable access to content only for certain people.

6. Super Admin

Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the super admin role. This role only applies to Multisite installations – networks of connected WordPress sites. The super admin is responsible for the entire network and can make high-level changes such as adding and deleting sites. They can also manage the network’s users, themes, plugins, and more. As such, their dashboard looks similar to a regular Administrator.

When there is a super admin, the regular administrator role is somewhat modified. For example, regular admins on WordPress Multisite networks can no longer install, upload, and delete themes and plugins, nor can they modify user information. These capabilities are reserved for the super admin.

As an example of how these roles interact, the super admin can decide what plugins to install on the network, and individual site admins can only choose whether or not to activate them.