What is a “user role” in WordPress? That’s a question asked by so many of my WordPress coaching clients.

A “user role” is an assignment of rights and permissions to each user in a content management system.

Out of the box, WordPress assigns various user roles that allow or deny the ability to take actions in the system.

These are:

• Subscriber: a user role that has no login rights, but gives a user the ability to receive notifications from WordPress. A subscriber may get post notifications or comment notifications on a blog they subscribe to.
• Contributor: This role allows the user to log in and submit a draft of a blog post, but the post cannot be published. It can be read, edited, and published by the Editor role. This helps a site owner control content publishing, so a contributor’s contribution can go through an editorial process.
• Author: The author role has contributor and publishing rights. An author can log in, create a post, and publish that post without editorial oversight, but they cannot edit another Author or contributor’s submission. Authors are also granted an Author page that lists all posts published by the Author. This page can contain the Author’s avatar, social media profile links, and an email address.
• Editor: This role is the second-highest role. An Editor can edit and manage all posts in draft mode or publish to the system. The Editor can edit posts and pages, which are distinctly different. A post is usually a piece of content with metadata, like categories and tags, a post date and time, the name of the Author or Contributor, and loads in reverse chronological order – the latest post first, the oldest last. A page is just what it says – a page of content or utility, like terms and conditions or contact us. Editors have robust control over pages and posts with the ability to edit, publish, unpublish, and delete. Editors can also restore revisions, which are sort of like backups of posts without using your host’s site backup system. Editors cannot interact with Administrator-level controls.
• Administrator: Has all rights in the system. Can add and remove Users, assign roles, access theme and plugin controls, install and delete themes and plugins, and manage system-level controls under the site’s Settings panel.

These roles are available in every WordPress installation.

Can roles be added or further restricted? Yes. There are User Role plugins to add custom User roles. For example, you can give an Author the same rights as an Editor. And, sometimes a plugin can add a User Role. For example, my Radio Station PRO plugin adds a user role for Show Hosts and Show Producers, and enables rights in the plugin to create and manage show content.

User Roles, therefore, are extensible and fluid. They’re only fixed because most people don’t realize how flexible they can be.

There is one additional role, Super Admin, that can manage all the sites in a multisite network.