What Permissions Do Authors Have in WordPress?
The “Author” role is one of 5 key user roles in WordPress, alongside “Subscriber“, “Contributor“, “Editor” and “Administrator”.
You may see the “Author” role listed in the middle of this group. Authors do have more permissions than some roles and less than others.
But don’t be fooled. Authors have few real capabilities in a WordPress site.
Here’s a rundown of what Authors can do on a default WordPress site:
- Edit, delete and publish their own posts
- Write comments
- Upload files to the Media Library
This next image shows a chart taken from the WordPress Explained book which shows how Authors fit in alongside other WordPress user roles.
To be honest, the only thing that Authors can do is manage their own posts.
What Can Authors See in the WordPress Dashboard?
Unlike Subscribers, people in the Author role can access the WordPress admin area.
This next image shows what an Author sees if they log in to the WordPress admin. They can see “Posts”, “Media” and “Comments”.
If an Author visits the Posts screen, they will only see the “Edit” links for their own posts. For all other posts, they will simply see “View” link. The Title of the post is not clickable.
On the Comments screen, the Author will be able to see all the comments on the site. They will see a “Bulk Actions” dropdown, but they are not actually able to manage comments.
In the Tools screen, the Authors will see a completely blank screen. Yes, as with the “Bulk Actions” dropdown for Comments, access to this Tools is probably a bug.
Can You Change the Author Permissions?
Yes, you can give the Authors more permissions than they have with default WordPress.
The Capability Managers Enhanced plugin is an excellent way to view and change the permissions for each user role.
This next image shows the permissions available to Authors for Posts and Pages. Notice that Authors are not allowed to touch anyone else’s content. They do not have the “Edit others” or “Delete others” permissions.
Also in the image above, notice the permissions available to Authors for Pages. They can’t do anything at all with pages!
How Does PublishPress Work With Authors?
PublishPress has a ton of different features available to improve the experience for Authors in WordPress.
- The Multiple Authors add-on allows you to assign more than one Author to a single post.
- You can create publishing workflows for Authors, including automatic notifications.
- You can set up a pre-publishing checklist so Authors know exactly what to include in each post.
- Click here to see Author permissions for PublishPress screens.
Kevin Wallace
Is it possible to let a user edit just one page on a site?
Steve Burge
Yes, that’s possible with a plugin like this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/press-permit-core/. That might make a good tutorial topic for our blog.
LynnW
Can Capability Manager Enhanced be setup so that Authors can MANAGE comments on their OWN posts, but are limited to only commenting (not managing comments) on posts that are not their own?
LynnW
Instead of “manage” I meant “moderate”…
Steve Burge
Hi LynnW. Sorry this isn’t a core feature of WordPress (permissions for comments are very limited), so Capability Manager Enhanced can’t do this.
I’ve asked this team if we can consider building some permissions for comments.
Sanjay
Can an edited page display others with old content before admin approval for new content instead of 404 error?
Steve Burge
Hi Sanjay. Yes, use the Revisionary plugin for this