What is “No Role for this Site” in WordPress?

If you go to the “Users” screen in WordPress, you will be able to assign users to normal roles, such as Subscriber, Contributor, Author, Editor, and Administrator.

However, there is another option called “No role for this site”. You can think of this option as a type of blocking option. Any users who are moved to “No role for this site” will not be able to access your WordPress admin area.

This screenshot below shows how you can move a user to “No role for this site” directly from the “Users” screen. In this guide, I'll explain how the “No role for this site” setting works.

This screenshot below shows how you can move a user to “No role for this site” while editing that user's profile.

If you assign a user to “No role for this site”, here are the key things to know about the user's account:

• The user will be still able to log in to your site.
• The user will be able to interact with the frontend of the site, such as posting comments on posts.
• The user will NOT be able to access the admin area of your site.

If you want other options for blocking users, check out our guide to stopping users from logging in to WordPress. If you're familiar with WordPress, one way to think of the “No role for this site” setting is that it's similar to giving users a Role Level of 0.

When it comes to editing, check out our guide to stopping users from creating new posts. If you're using the block editor, you can hide elements in the Gutenberg with the Editor Features screen. You can also force users to use either Gutenberg or the Classic Editor. Finally you can also prevent users from having access to some blocks, or even stop them from adding any new blocks.