You need to know what the roles of the WordPress users are in order to correctly define who in your team gets what role.
By default, WordPress has the following user roles:
- Subscriber
- Contributor
- Author
- Editor
- Administrator.
Naturally, each role has different capabilities.
Here are the default users’ powers in a nutshell:
Subscriber
The subscriber is at the bottom of the hierarchy. They have only a few rights. If you are not using any plugins (or custom solutions) to change the subscriber’s rights, these users can only change their profile’s information, and write comments, if you didn’t disable the comments.
Contributor
Contributors are users who are not exactly part of your business, or your website, but are helping you. Like the name suggests. Contributors are almost as limited as Subscribers are. Yet, they can create posts. Contributors can only edit and delete their own content. Their abilities, however, are limited. They can only change the posts before they are published. Once that happens, the contributors no longer have the power to change the post.
Author
The users whom you assigned the author role will be able to write, edit, publish, and delete their content. On top of that, they can also upload files. Naturally, Authors can change their profiles. As it is important, let’s repeat, the users with the role of Author can delete their content. Unlike the contributors, who can do that only before the article is published, the Author can do it whenever.
Editor
Editors, as the name of the role suggests are almost like Administrators when it comes to the capabilities of managing content, that is. Editors are capable of writing, editing, publishing, and deleting posts.
As opposed to the previously covered WordPress users, the Editor can manipulate any post on the site. Whoever the author is. After all, that’s the goal of having an Editor – someone knowledgeable and capable of fixing anyone else’s articles.
Administrator
The Administrator profile is automatically created when you install WordPress. The users assigned the role of an Administrator can do everything the other can. What makes them different are the powers to install, delete, and edit themes and plugins.
Follow this link for a detailed explanation of WordPress Roles
