PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, Admin Menus

PublishPress Capabilities is the access control plugin. You can control all the capabilities and permissions on your WordPress site. We built this user role editor plugin so you have an EASY and POWERFUL way to manage users.

You can use PublishPress Capabilities manage all your WordPress user roles, from Administrators and Editors to Authors, Contributors, Subscribers and custom roles. Each use role can have the exact capabilities that your site needs.

PublishPress Capabilities can clean up your post editing screen, admin area, and even the Profile screen. You can decide what authors see when they’re writing posts. You can hide any feature on the Gutenberg or Classic Editor screens. You can remove items in the WordPress dashboard and inside user accounts screens.

The Pro version of PublishPress Capabilities has many extra features, including the ability to control admin menu links and frontend menu links.

PublishPress Capabilities Pro

Upgrade to Capabilities Pro
This plugin is the free version of PublishPress Capabilities. The Pro version of Capabilities has all the features you need to control permissions for your WordPress users. With Capabilities Pro you can manage access to posts, pages, media and custom post types. Click here to control access to your WordPress site with Capabilities Pro!

The Key Features of PublishPress Capabilities

1. Roles: You can edit, create, duplicate any WordPress user role.
2. Capabilities: You can control all WordPress and plugin capabilities.
3. Editor Features: You decide what users see when they’re writing posts in Gutenberg or the Classic Editor.
4. Admin Features: You can remove items from the WordPress admin, toolbar, and even dashboard widgets.
5. Frontend Features: This feature allows you to modify the site’s frontend by hiding or adding CSS.
6. Profile Features: You can hide features for users in the “Profile” screen.
7. Admin menus: You can stop users from accessing any admin menu link.
8. Nav Menus: You can restrict access to navigation menus by user role, or logged in status.

Feature 1. Roles

PublishPress Capabilities gives you detailed control over all the permission levels on your WordPress site. You can edit user roles on your site, from Administrator and Editor to Contributor and Subscriber.

With PublishPress Capabilities you can create or copy any existing WordPress user role. These roles can be customized in exactly the same way as the default WordPress roles. These new roles can be added to single sites or to an entire multisite network.

Click here to see how to manage user roles.

Feature 2. Capabilities

With the Capabilities plugin, you can choose who can Publish, Read, Edit and Delete content. You can choose permissions for posts, pages, custom content types, categories, tags, and more.

Click here to see how to manage capabilities.

Many WordPress users have sites with custom post types. This can be done using custom code, a theme, or with a plugin. No matter how your post type is created, PublishPress Capabilities lets you enforce and assign distinct capabilities for your post type.

Click here to see how to control post type permissions.

PublishPress Capabilities enables you to add extra permissions to the taxonomies on your site. This feature includes the default Categories and Tags, but also applies to other taxonomies. For example, in WooCommerce you can apply custom permissions to Product categories, Product tags, and Product shipping classes. You can enforce and assign “Manage”, “Edit” and “Assign” distinct capabilities for all your taxonomies.

Click here to learn about taxonomy permissions.

Feature 3. Editor Features

PublishPress Capabilities has an option called “Editor Features” allows you to clean up the post editing screen. You can decide what users see when they’re writing posts. You can hide anything on the Gutenberg or Classic Editor screens. You can hide boxes inside the sidebadd such Tags, Categories, or Excerpt. You can the “Publish” button. You can even hide the post title, body, or permalink. This is a great alternative to plugins such as Adminimize.

Click here to learn about hiding editor features.

WordPress has a feature called “metaboxes”. This is a strange name, but you have seen them often if you use WordPress. When a user edits a post, the edit screen has several default boxes: Status & visibility, Featured image, Categories, Tags, etc. These boxes are metaboxes. Plugins can add also add their own metaboxes. The Pro version of the PublishPress Capabilities plugin allows you to hide metaboxes for specific user roles.

Click here to learn about hiding metaboxes.

Feature 4. Admin Features

“Admin Features” allows you to hide features in the WordPress admin area and toolbar. You can decide what users see in your WordPress dashboard. You can use this option to hide all the links in the toolbar including “About WordPress”, “Visit Site” and more. You can also hide dashboard widgets such as “At a Glance”, “Quick Draft”, and “WordPress Events and News”.

Click here to learn about removing toolbar items and dashboard widgets.

Feature 5. Frontend Features

The “Frontend Features” screen allows you to modify the features that show on the frontend of your website. You can choose to hide IDs or classes, add CSS styles, or add body classes. All of these changes can be targeted to specific user roles.

Click here to learn about frontend changes.

Feature 6. Profile Features

“Profile Features” allows you to hide features in the “Profile” screen. You can decide what users see in their accounts. This “Profile” area is used as a dumping ground for the settings of many different plugins.

Click here to learn about the Profile Features option.

Feature 7. WordPress Admin Menu Restrictions (Pro version)

With PublishPress Capabilities you can restrict access to admin menu screens by user roles. This is useful because many plugin do not have any way to control who can access their admin screens.

Click to see how to block Admin menu access.

Feature 8. Nav Menu Restrictions

PublishPress Capabilities enables you to restrict access to navigation menus by roles, logged in and logged out users. This is useful because a default WordPress site does not give you way to control the visibility of your links.

Click to see how to block frontend menu access.

PublishPress Capabilities is Safe to Use

PublishPress Capabilities is completely safe to use. Every time you change your site’s permissions, this plugin will take a backup that you can restore if anything goes wrong. You can use these backups to migrate your roles and permissions from one site to another.

This security feature is also very helpful if you want to test out changes on your site, or if you’ve installed a new plugin that has changed your site’s permissions.

Every time you change your permissions, the PublishPress Capabilities plugin will now automatically create a backup. If you make a mistake, go to the “Backup” menu link and you’ll be able to roll back to a previous version.

Click here to see how to backup permissions.

Support for Media Library Permissions

PublishPress Capabilities enables you to decide who can upload, edit and delete files from your site’s Media Library. By default, only Administrators are able to delete files in your Media Library. Subscribers and Contributors are not even allowed to upload files. You can customize these permissions for the Media Library and also the Featured Image box.

Click here to learn about Media Library permissions.

Support for WooCommerce Permissions

We mentioned earlier that PublishPress Capabilities has special support for WooCommerce taxonomies. This is true for the rest of WooCommerce also. With PublishPress Capabilities you can control permissions for WooCommerce products, orders and coupons.

Click here to learn about WooCommerce permissions.

Support for WordPress Multisite

PublishPress Capabilities allows you to control permissions on a single site or across your whole network. Every time you update permissions in PublishPress Capabilities, you can choose to sync those changes across your multisite network.

Click here to learn about multisite permissions.

User Testing / User Switching

If you run a WordPress website which allows users to log in, you probably spend a lot of time answering account questions or solving website bugs for your users. Site administrators often have to browse their site and see exactly what the user sees. They need to test the user’s account without resetting their password. This is possible with PublishPress Capabilities.

Click here to learn about user testing.

Join PublishPress and get the Pro plugins

The Pro versions of the PublishPress plugins are well worth your investment. The Pro versions have extra features and faster support. Click here to join PublishPress.

Join PublishPress and you’ll get access to these nine Pro plugins:

• PublishPress Authors Pro allows you to add multiple authors and guest authors to WordPress posts.
• PublishPress Blocks Pro has everything you need to build professional websites with the WordPress block editor.
• PublishPress Capabilities Pro is the plugin to manage your WordPress user roles, permissions, and capabilities.
• PublishPress Checklists Pro enables you to define tasks that must be completed before content is published.
• PublishPress Future Pro is the plugin for scheduling changes to your posts.
• PublishPress Permissions Pro is the plugin for restricted content and advanced WordPress permissions.
• PublishPress Planner Pro is the plugin for managing and scheduling WordPress content.
• PublishPress Revisions Pro allows you to update your published pages with teamwork and precision.
• PublishPress Series Pro enables you to group content together into a series

Together, these plugins are a suite of powerful publishing tools for WordPress. If you need to create a professional workflow in WordPress, with moderation, revisions, permissions and more… then you should try PublishPress.

Bug Reports

Bug reports for PublishPress Capabilities are welcomed in our repository on GitHub. Please note that GitHub is not a support forum, and that issues that aren’t properly qualified as bugs will be closed.

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