Why creating a user profile might be necessary.
If you want to add a small number of people to your website, then this is easy to do with WordPress’s built-in user management system.
This method is ideal for:
- Small businesses that have several different employees managing their website.
- Organizations such as churches and nonprofits that have volunteers updating their website.
- Blogs with multiple authors, such as a fashion blog that you are writing with some friends.
- Online stores that have several people managing inventory, shipping items, etc.
Hey! If you would rather, we support you in this, schedule a Quick Call (free with an active cariCare plan), or drop an email, or schedule a Support Consult.
Accessing the section on your website
You simply need to go to the Users » Add New User in your WordPress admin area. Next, you just have to fill out the form to create a new user.
- On the form, you first need to enter a username. The user can use this or their email address to login.
Tip: The WordPress username can not be easily changed later, but all the other details can.
- Next, enter the user’s email address. Double-check that you are using the correct email address. Users will need this in order to reset their passwords and receive email notifications.
- After that, you can enter the first name, last name, and website URL. Since these are optional fields, you can also leave them blank. Users can edit their own profiles to complete these fields later.
Setting the user’s password
In the next step, you will need to choose a password. We recommend using an online strong password generator for this purpose.
Tip: You can use the ‘Generate password’ button to automatically create a strong password.
Below the password field, you will see a checkbox to send the user an email. If you check this, the user will receive an email letting them know how to log in. This will also have a link, so they can set a different password if they want.
User Roles
The last option on the page is to choose a WordPress user role from the dropdown list.
Each user role comes with a different set of capabilities. Subscriber is the least powerful role, and Administrator is the most powerful role. You need to choose a role depending on what tasks a user will be performing on your website.
You may already know what role you want to give your user. If so, select the role, then click the ‘Add New User’ button at the bottom of the screen.
If you’re unsure about the role, don’t worry. We have a detailed explanation of the roles in the next section of this article.
Tip: Some plugins create additional user roles. For instance, WooCommerce adds ‘Customer’ and ‘Shop Manager’ roles. All in One SEO adds the ‘SEO Manager’ and ‘SEO Editor’ roles. We won’t cover those in this article. That information can be sourced under AddOn Documentation in the cariAcademy.
Understanding user roles in WordPress
WordPress comes with these default user roles:
- Administrator
- Editor
- Author
- Contributor
- Subscriber
Administrator
An administrator can perform all tasks on your WordPress site.
You should only assign this role to users who you fully trust. You should also feel confident about their technical skills.
With the administrator user role, a user can install plugins, change themes, delete content, and even delete other users. This includes other administrators.
Editor
An editor can add, edit, publish, and delete their own WordPress posts. They can also do all of these actions for posts by all other users.
They cannot access website settings, plugins, themes, and other admin features.
This role is useful if you have an editor for your site who manages a team of authors and publishes content on a regular basis.
Author
Authors can add, edit, and publish their own posts. They can upload files, too.
They can’t edit or publish other people’s posts or access features like plugins, themes, settings, and tools.
You may want to use a plugin to restrict authors so they can only write in a specific category.
You could also let authors revise their published posts. Again, you will need to use a plugin to extend the Author user role.
You can learn more about the Author role here.
Contributor
A contributor can add and edit their own posts but cannot publish them.
However, they cannot edit other users’ posts or access features like plugins, themes, settings, and tools.
It’s important to note that contributors cannot upload media files, such as images. The easiest way to get around this is to get contributors to upload their post’s image(s) through a file upload form.
That way, the image(s) can be saved straight to the WordPress media library. This makes it easy for an editor or administrator to add them to the post.
Subscriber
The subscriber role does not let users add or edit posts in any way.
With the default settings, subscribers can create a profile and save their details. This lets them enter them more quickly when leaving comments.
You can also create membership only content, such as with our website. Schedule a consultation to discuss more about that, or with an active cariCare plan, schedule a quick call.
Managing Users in WordPress
As an administrator, you can add and remove users from your WordPress site at any time. After you have added a user, you can edit their profile at any time and change any information including passwords.
Simply click on the Users tab in your WordPress admin to go to the user page. You can edit or delete a user at any time.
You can edit the user’s profile to change their password, change their role, and more. You can also bulk edit users to change their role, if you want to upgrade or downgrade several users’ role at the same time.
Users (except Subscribers) can also edit their own profile by going to Users » Profile in the WordPress dashboard (if this option has been made visible to them by default). Your clients can also update their Account Information, under ‘My Account’.
For both Clients and other users, they can add a profile picture and change most of their details, but they cannot change their role or the role of others.
