How to Control Access to Elementor Templates

A few PublishPress users have written to us and asked if it's possible to control who can access Elementor templates.

By default, only users in the “Administrator” role have the ability to create and edit new templates. In this guide, I'll show you how to allow other users to manage templates.

For more control over Elementor, check out this guide on managing access to Elementor admin screens.

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Control Access to the Templates Screen

You can restrict access to the “Templates” screen in Elementor by using the PublishPress Capabilities plugin.

• Install both the Elementor and PublishPress Capabilities plugins.
• Go to the “Capabilities” link in your WordPress admin area.
• On the right sidebar, enable “My Templates”

• Then, Choose the role you want to edit in the top-left corner.
• Use the checkboxes in the “My Templates” row. Now you can control Elementor Templates for a specific role.

This next image shows what a user in the “Author” role will see after logging into the WordPress site. They will now have access to the “Saved Templates” screen. They will also be able to add new templates.

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How to Give Access to Specific Templates

You can give or restrict access to individual templates by using the PublishPress Permissions plugin. If you have the Pro version, you can also hide templates that users do not have access to edit.

• Install both the Elementor and PublishPress Permissions plugins.
• Go to the “Permissions” then “Settings: in your WordPress admin area.
• Click the “Core” tab.
• Make sure the “My Templates” box is checked.

• Go to the “Templates” screen.
• Click “Edit” under any template name.

• Scroll down on the template screen until you reach “Permissions: Edit this Group”.
• Here you can set access to “Enabled” or “Blocked”. You can do this for roles, custom groups, or even specific users.

In the image above, users in the “Editor” role are blocked from editing this template.

• If you're using the Free version of PublishPress Permissions, then Editors will still be able to see these templates, if they have access to the Templates screen. However, they won't see the “Edit” link.
• If you're using the Pro version of PublishPress Permissions, then Editors will not be able to see this template at all.

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Elementor Summary

Elementor is growing very quickly, although the plugin doesn't make it easy to modify permissions (and some options are restricted to the Pro version). However, it is possible to control access to the Templates area.

And PublishPress plugins can help with other Elementor tasks too. For example, you can give Elementor users access to one post. You can also add more than one author to Elementor posts.

If you want to get really fancy, you can also use Gutenberg blocks inside Elementor.