Roles and Capabilities

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Summary of Roles
Roles
Capabilities
Resources
- Plugins
- Information

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 the user access to such tasks as writing and editing posts, creating Pages, creating categories, moderating comments, managing plugins, managing themes, and managing other users, by assigning a specific role to each of the users.

WordPress has six pre-defined roles: Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. Each role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. There are many capabilities including “publish_posts“, “moderate_comments“, and “edit_users“. A default set of capabilities is pre-assigned to each role, but other capabilities can be assigned or removed using the add_cap() and remove_cap() functions. New roles can be introduced or removed using the add_role() and remove_role() functions.

The Super Admin role allows a user to perform all possible capabilities. Each of the other roles has a decreasing number of allowed capabilities. For instance, the Subscriber role has just the “read” capability. One particular role should not be considered to be senior to another role. Rather, consider that roles define the user’s responsibilities within the site.

Summary of Roles

Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features. See the Create a Network article.
Administrator (slug: ‘administrator’) – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
Editor (slug: ‘editor’) – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
Author (slug: ‘author’) – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
Contributor (slug: ‘contributor’) – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
Subscriber (slug: ‘subscriber’) – somebody who can only manage their profile.

Upon installing WordPress, an Administrator account is automatically created.

The default role for new users can be set in Administration Screens > Settings > General.

Capability	Super Admin	Administrator	Editor	Author	Contributor	Subscriber
create_sites	Y
delete_sites	Y
manage_network	Y
manage_sites	Y
manage_network_users	Y
manage_network_plugins	Y
manage_network_themes	Y
manage_network_options	Y
upload_plugins	Y
upload_themes	Y
upgrade_network	Y
setup_network	Y
Capability	Super Admin	Administrator	Editor	Author	Contributor	Subscriber
activate_plugins	Y	Y (single site or enabled by network setting)
create_users	Y	Y (single site)
delete_plugins	Y	Y (single site)
delete_themes	Y	Y (single site)
delete_users	Y	Y (single site)
edit_files	Y	Y (single site)
edit_plugins	Y	Y (single site)
edit_theme_options	Y	Y
edit_themes	Y	Y (single site)
edit_users	Y	Y (single site)
export	Y	Y
import	Y	Y
Capability	Super Admin	Administrator	Editor	Author	Contributor	Subscriber
install_plugins	Y	Y (single site)
install_themes	Y	Y (single site)
list_users	Y	Y
manage_options	Y	Y
promote_users	Y	Y
remove_users	Y	Y
switch_themes	Y	Y
update_core	Y	Y (single site)
update_plugins	Y	Y (single site)
update_themes	Y	Y (single site)
edit_dashboard	Y	Y
customize	Y	Y
delete_site	Y	Y
Capability	Super Admin	Administrator	Editor	Author	Contributor	Subscriber

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