How to Set Up Users & Roles in The Hub for Your Team Members and Clients

With The Hub, you can give unlimited users multiple roles on any WordPress site you manage — even if they aren’t WPMU DEV members! Learn how to easily set all this up in minutes and give team members and clients as much or as little access as you’d like.

Plus, With The Hub Client, you can create your own fully branded Hub for your team members, clients, and collaborators … all in just a few clicks!

Oh, and did we mention it’s all free for your users and you’re able to be set up in minutes?

In this article, we’ll be going over how to:

1. Set Up Team Members
2. Set Up User Roles
3. Add User Customization Settings
4. Gain Quick Access to Sites
5. Set Up The Hub Client (THC)
6. Set Up Client Roles

This post’s features are accomplished from the Team tab in The Hub dashboard, except for The Hub Client, accessed by the Hub Client Plugin (which we’ll show you how to activate).

1. Set Up Team Members

The Hub allows you to collaborate with other users by assigning them roles and granting them access to specific areas of your WordPress site(s).

Creating new users in The Hub is the easiest way to allow access to users, all from one place.

From The Hub, click on Team…

Before inviting people to join your team, make sure that your details are correct, as these will appear on the invitation emails that your new team members will receive and your client portal.

To check, click on the Settings tab. If you haven’t already set this up, enter your name, upload your logo, and click Save to update your settings.

Once this initial step is done, go to Team Members and click the Add First Team Member button to get started.

This brings up the Invite new member form, where you’ll be able to fill in the following details:

• Enter their email address and name.
• Select all the sites listed on your Hub that you want to give your new user access to. These settings can be changed at any time.

Scroll to select a site or use the dropdown menu and quick-search feature

• Select a user role (View & Edit, View Only, or a Custom role). This can also be changed at any time.
• Add notes about the user (optional).
• Select an add-on service for the user (e.g. access to Support). This is optional too.

After filling in the details, click on Invite.

This will send out a confirmation email to the new user.

Once the user gets the email and hits Confirm, they will be redirected to WPMU DEV to set up a free account with their email, name, and password.

New team members don’t need to be members of WPMU DEV, and there’s no cost involved.

When they click Join, they will be added to your Team Hub account, where they will only have access to the sites and roles granted by the admin.

As the WPMU DEV member and Hub administrator, you can see the new user in the Team Members area.

If the user hasn’t confirmed yet, their account will show as Pending.

Once the member accepts the invite and creates their free account, their status will become active.

From the Team Members section, you can quickly and easily add as many users as you need by clicking on the New Team Member button and view the names, emails, roles, addons, and sites that your team members have access to, as well as managing and removing them from your account.

2. Set Up User Roles

Roles give your team members’ access capabilities to one or more sites in your Hub.

With almost two dozen configurable modules, The Hub allows you to provide your team members with access to all areas of your site(s) and/or customize roles to access only specific areas and module settings.

When you create a new team member profile (see previous step), you can set the following roles:

• View and Edit – All: Team members can view and edit the settings in this area. Note: This is a system role and cannot be modified (only custom roles can be modified).
• View Only – All: Team members can view the data and settings in this area but cannot modify them. This limitation only applies to the area associated with the current toggle. This is another system role that cannot be modified.
• Custom: Team members have access to an area but are limited to certain tasks or actions within that area.

To create a custom role, click on the Roles tab and then click on + Create New Role.

You can give the new role a unique name and customize it by configuring any of the available permissions and settings however you like.

Let’s take a closer look at how to customize a role.

3. Add User Customization Settings

Customizing access for a role can be determined by clicking on all the available options (e.g. sites, security settings, SEO, etc). Also, choose to have View & Edit or View Only for sites.

Create a custom role by enabling or hiding various Hub modules.

The Custom option lets you configure specific module settings and provides detailed task descriptions about each option.

For example, if you give a team member custom access to the Plugins module, you can allow them to View & Edit all settings in that module, View only, or select which settings you’d like them to have the capability to manage by clicking Custom.

If you select Custom, a new screen will open giving you further customization options for the module.

After specifying the options and settings your team members can access for all of the various available modules, click Save to update your custom role settings.

Team members assigned that specific custom role will now see only the modules, options, and settings made available for that role. Everything else will be hidden from view.

You can view all the roles you have assigned to team members under the Role column in the Team Members screen.

To customize which sites team members have access to or to change their roles, simply click on the team member, edit their settings, and resave.

Easily reassign the user roles and sites your team members can access.

For more information about creating custom roles, refer to our documentation.

4. Gain Quick Access to Sites

Click on the Sites tab to quickly and easily view which team members have access to specific sites being managed in The Hub.

The Users column displays how many team members are assigned to each site.

Clicking the number in the Users column displays the team members assigned to that site.

Click on the plus sign by the site’s name to add or remove a user from that site.

You can check who has access and whether they’re active or not, uncheck the user to remove their access from the site, invite a new user, or resend an invitation to a pending user.

Now that we have looked at the basics of setting up new team members, let’s look at how to personalize the area your team members will access information from to collaborate and help you manage your sites.

5. Set Up The Hub Client (THC)

With The Hub Client, you can provide access to clients, collaborators, and users using your personalized white label Hub. It’s your own Hub, the way you and your organization want it, customized to your perfection.

Plus, you can use any host (including our own managed hosting), resell our services, and run it from your domain.

To use The Hub Client plugin, you have to be connected with The Hub to access its API. Learn how to install The Hub Client.

You can install the Hub Client plugin via the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin installed on your domain.

After installing and activating The Hub Client, the next step is to Configure it.

In your WordPress dashboard, click The Hub Client > Client Portal to access the main screen of the plugin.

Change the brand name in the Site profile section to replace WPMU DEV on your client portal with your business name and logo.

You can change the colors for the Navigation background, Navigation color, and Hover and active color in the Colors area. Do this by visually picking the colors or using hex codes (e.g. #FFFFFF for white).

Pick and choose colors to match your brand.

Next, head over to the Navigation tab to customize your client portal’s navigation menu.

To display links in your portal’s navigation bar, create a custom menu in Appearance > Menus, and then click Add and select the custom menu you’ve created.

Add a navigation menu to your client portal.

In addition to setting up the navigation menu for your portal’s users, you can select a page to be replaced with your client hub and specify a custom URL to be used for the back button on your login page.

The Hub Client creates a default page for your client hub (i.e. yourdomain.tld/hub) but you can select any of your site’s existing pages from the Client Page dropdown menu to replace your client hub instead.

Select where your team members and clients will log in to access site details.

After customizing these settings, users will be greeted with your branded login page.

Remember to finish setting up your client portal by clicking on the other tabs and configuring their options.

Go to the Login & Signup tab and select your Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages. You will need to create these pages first before they can appear in the dropdown menu selector.

Next, click the Client Support tab to add a Help button and offer live chat support to logged in users.

The Client Hub lets you offer live chat support to users via integrated widgets from various solution providers (Livechat, tawk.to, and HubSpot).

You can also set the default language for your client portal pages and widgets added to your site via the Translations area.

Congratulations! Your team members and clients can now log in and use your very own customized Hub.

Now that we have looked at how to add new team members and assign them specific roles, let’s take a look at how to do the same for clients.

6. Set Up Client Roles

The Hub Client plugin allows you to create a customized Hub for your team members and a portal where your clients can log in and access information about their sites.

As we have seen, adding team members and assigning them roles is done via The Hub’s Team section.

Configuring roles for clients, on the other hand, is done via The Hub’s Clients & Billing module.

In the Clients & Billing section, click on the Clients tab and select Clients to add new clients and view details of your existing clients.

To manually add new clients and assign them a specific role, click on the + New Client button.

Add new clients and assign them roles.

Note that if you have installed multiple Client Hubs on various sites, you will need to specify the primary Hub to send out communications to clients (e.g. emails, invoices, etc.).

The Hub’s Clients & Billing comes with preset system roles that you cannot edit. You can, however, create new custom roles and assign these to clients.

To create a new custom role, click on the +Create New Role button, name it, and use the toggles and menus to configure the role’s permission settings.

Set up custom roles for clients.

For more details on configuring client roles, see our documentation.

There is No Sub for The Hub

You can add an unlimited amount of team members, clients, and collaborators and give them precise access to specific sites, modules, and support. All without leaving The Hub.

And with Reseller’s automated site creation & client billing, your white label Hub becomes your very own SaaS business, automatically adding new clients and assigning them roles and permissions!

There’s just no other substitute out there for an all-in-one platform when it comes to managing all your WordPress sites.

See our documentation section to learn all about our Team & Role Customization features.

Also, see this documentation section to learn more about using The Hub Client.

To keep tabs on what’s coming, be sure to follow our Roadmap. And for all Hub-related information, check out The Hub’s documentation and stay tuned to our blog.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for accuracy and relevancy. [Originally Published: September 2020 / Revised: March 2024]

Have you set up users & roles in The Hub yet? What do you think? Let us know in the comments section!