How to Give Elementor Users Access to One Post

The Elementor plugin is an excellent good page-builder for WordPress sites. It is also growing very fast, with huge numbers of new downloads every day.

This week, one PublishPress customer asked us if it was possible to allow some WordPress users to edit a single post with Elementor.

Our first thought was “yes, this is easy”. We've done it before many times using this approach, this approach and others.

However, more testing revealed that a workaround is needed for Elementor. This is because Elementor can only be used if you have the edit posts permission.

The edit_posts permission is very powerful and allows far more access than our customer wanted to give this user. They only wanted to allow access to one post.

Here is a workaround that you can use restrict access to Elementor posts. It's worth nothing a very similar technique also works for controlling access to Beaver Builder pages. These page builders can add a little complexity to WordPress: it's definitely easier to give specific permission to normal WordPress posts.


Step #1. Create a new user role

First, we're going to copy the Subscriber role because it has very limited permissions.

  • Go to “Capabilities” in your WordPress admin menu.
  • Under “Unique Capabilities for Post Types” in the sidebar, check the box saying “Enable the “Create” column for selected post types”.
  • Click “Update”.
  • Choose “Elementor User” in the top-left corner.
  • In the “Editing” area, check the box for “Edit” in the “Posts” row.
  • Place a red X in all the other boxes of the “Posts” row.

What are we are doing here is giving the edit_posts permission, but also removing all the other key permissions.


Step #2. Give Access to a Post

Now that we have the “Elementor User” role and have given it the general capabilities that are needed, we can grant access to a specific post.

  • Go to “Posts” in your WordPress admin menu.
  • Edit a post.
  • Scroll down to the “Permissions: Edit this Post” box.
  • Choose “Enabled” for the “Elementor User” role.
Select Elementor Role

Step #3. Create and Test the User

  • Go to “Users” in your WordPress admin area.
  • Create a user in your new role.
Elementor Account

Now it's time to test your new user. You can either login as the new user in different browser, or take advantage of the User Testing feature.

When you login as your new user, this image shows what you will see. The user will have very limited access, but they will be able to edit the post you gave access to. The PublishPress Permissions plugin is hiding any posts that they can not access.

Single Post

We hope this guide helped you. Elementor is growing quickly, but the plugin doesn't make it easy to modify permissions (and some options are restricted to the Pro version). However, the PublishPress plugins can make it easier, whether you want to control access to specific posts, or to Elementor's Templates Screen. For more control over Elementor, check out this guide on managing access to Elementor admin screens.

9 Comments

  1. Dear Madam, Sir,

    I have PublishPress Capabilities and PublishPress Permissions installed within my WordPress environment.

    I created a new page in WordPress in which I linked the read and write rights only for this page to a newly set user role.

    I followed the following tuturiol (by Steve):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF8sJQ4VkII

    In principle everything works, but when loading Elelementor it freezes. Error message: ‘Unable to load Elementor, try in safe mode’. I have temporarily disabled the Elemontor Pro plugin.

    Elementor works correctly for the rest of the website, however in conjunction with the plugin PP Capabilty and PP Permissions it gives an error message (conflict).

    Do you have any idea how I can fix this problem?

    Thank you very much for your help!

    Kind regards,
    Peter Noy

    1. Hi Peter. Thanks for using PublishPress. Sorry, we wrote this tutorial with Elementor. We don’t have a copy of the Pro version available to see if any changes are needed for Elementor Pro.

  2. Hi Peter. Have you found a solution to this? I’m facing the same problem. The only workaround I have has been to enable the pp_administer_content flag at the Capabilities for the role. It enables Elementor, but also gives that user access to some other features and pages I don’t want them to look at.

    Please let me know if you have found any way to get Elementor Pro working with the PP Plugins.

    Thanks,

    1. Sorry, the PublishPress team aren’t able to jump into the comments to debug issues with other Pro plugins. If anyone knows they’re free to post.

      If anyone needs the answer for their site, the PublishPress Pro support can help.

  3. @Steve Burge:
    “If anyone needs the answer for their site, the PublishPress Pro support can help”.
    I need some specific answers prior to purchase. How do I contact this support team? I’m not seeing any links on the site.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *