January 17, 2012 
Our WordPress Question and Answer sessions continue this week. We’re asking WPMU readers to tell us about a tricky WordPress problem they’re trying to solve.
The most interesting questions we receive will be published here on the blog, and the author will receive a three month membership at WPMU DEV, free of charge. Please submit your own WordPress question for your chance to win.
Today’s WordPress question was submitted by a WPMU reader named Andrew.
Is it possible to create a customized user profile on a WordPress site, where the site owner can specify what each user does and does not have access to? For example:
- An administrator profile that does not allow access to page and post editing, or…
- A content creator profile that does not allow access to the admin functions in WordPress dashboard
Instead of relying on the standard WordPress User Roles (contributor, author, editor etc.), is it possible to create my own?
-Andrew
Over to you, WordPress ninjas! Does anyone have a suggestion for Andrew? Have you ever tried something similar?
If you can offer any wisdom on this subject, please leave a comment below this article and let us know. You can also check out some of our previous WordPress questions here:
- Which Cache Plugin Should You Use?
- Why Do Plugins Disappear When Auto-Update Fails?
- How To Fix ‘Out of Memory’ Issues With SimplePie?
- How to Create a Simple Staging Environment for WordPress Development?
And remember to send us your own WordPress question! There’s three months of WPMU DEV lovin’ to be won, plus you can connect with WordPress experts to help solve your problems.
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I actually do this all the time for clients that also order a maintenance package. I will then have the Administrator Role of the site and I give the site owner the … Siteowner Role.
This Siteowner Role will get less capabilities than the Administrator Role, a. as not to confuse the client and b. to protect the client for mistakenly uninstalling plugins, changing settings and what not.
Of course you can also set it up in different scenarios, for example the ones described by Andrew in the original question.
The plugin that does the magic is Members (wordpress.org/extend/plugins/members/) by Justin Tadlock and if you want you can top it up with the Hide Menu plugin (http://www.deluxeblogtips.com/2011/06/wordpress-hide-admin-menu-my-first.html) by Rilwis.
Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for!
glad that works out for you!
Many thanks for helping us out on that one! Much appreciated :)
Cheers
Tim
Alrighty so I think I found the two plugins you need for this, the first one was already mentioned, but I did a quick video demo of how to work with these.. Check it out here! http://sean.co/answer/is-it-possible-to-create-a-customized-user-profile-on-a-wordpress-site-where-the-site-owner-can-specify-what-each-user-does-and-does-not-have-access-to/
Plugin 1: WordPress Hide Admin Menu Plugin:
http://codecanyon.net/item/wordpress-hide-admin-menu-plugin/290744
Plugin 2: User Role Editor Plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-role-editor/