How We Organized WordPress Roles and Capabilities
10 January 2018
I was looking for an easy way to see which capabilities each of the WordPress roles have, but I couldn’t find it, so I’ve put this together.
I’ve grouped similar capabilities together, so it’s easy to see that, for instance: an Administrator can manage plugins, or an Editor can manage and publish pages.
The groupings are my own, but the capability names come straight from the WordPress codex (although I’ve converted them from machine-readable to human-readable format).
| User role | Group of capabilities | Individual capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber and up | Read | Read |
|
Contributor and up
|
Create draft posts
|
Edit posts |
| Delete posts | ||
|
Author and up
|
Manage & Publish own posts
|
Publish posts |
| Edit published posts | ||
| Delete published posts | ||
| Upload files | ||
|
Editor and up
|
Manage & Publish others’ posts
|
Delete others’ posts |
| Edit others’ posts | ||
|
Manage & Publish pages
|
Delete others’ pages | |
| Delete pages | ||
| Delete published pages | ||
| Edit others’ pages | ||
| Edit pages | ||
| Edit published pages | ||
| Publish pages | ||
|
Manage & Read private posts and pages
|
Delete private pages | |
| Delete private posts | ||
| Edit private pages | ||
| Edit private posts | ||
| Read private pages | ||
| Read private posts | ||
|
Manage categories and links
|
Manage categories | |
| Manage links | ||
| Moderate comments | Moderate comments | |
| Insert unfiltered HTML | Unfiltered HTML | |
|
Administrator
|
Manage plugins
|
Activate plugins |
| Update plugins | ||
| Install plugins | ||
| Upload plugins | ||
| Delete plugins | ||
| Edit plugins | ||
|
Manage themes
|
Switch themes | |
| Update themes | ||
| Install themes | ||
| Upload themes | ||
| Delete themes | ||
| Edit themes | ||
|
Manage users
|
List users | |
| Promote users | ||
| Remove users | ||
| Edit users | ||
| Create users | ||
| Delete users | ||
|
Import and export
|
Export | |
| Import | ||
|
Manage widgets, menus, customization
|
Edit theme options | |
| Customize | ||
| Manage settings | Manage options | |
|
Manage site
|
Edit dashboard | |
| Delete site | ||
| Update core | ||
| Edit files |
*Note: On multisite installs, some administrator capabilities are only available to Super Admins. I’ve focused this table on single site installs for simplicity. For more info, visit the codex.
