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.

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Step #1. Create a new user role

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

• Install the PublishPress Permissions and PublishPress Capabilities plugins.
• Go to the “Capabilities” and then “Roles” in your WordPress admin menu.
• Choose “Copy” under the “Subscriber” name.
• Enter “Elementor User” into the “Role Name” box.
• Click “Create Role”.

• 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.

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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.

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Step #3. Create and Test the User

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

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.

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.