Roles and Capabilities « WordPress Codex

Since WordPress 2.0 came out, I’ve been meaning to look this up. Since I handle all of the content management on most of the sites I’m involved in, I’m always logged in at the admin level. However, WordPress 2.0 has a refined version with 5 levels of access – that allows groups to edit and post together.

For an organization with many people who can contribute- a blog/site can risk changing it’s voice from post to post. Imagine reading the New York Times and having some articles posted by a writer from USA Today- it would stick out like a sore thumb. So- the administrator or higher level access people can serve as editors- making sure nothing goes public that isn’t in style.

Another function is hiding some content from the masses- having some content visible only to people who have been granted higher level access. This is ideal for sites that may be used to communicate to an internal audience as well as an external one- or for a fan club- that get’s access to special info.

The codex link above spells out these roles. This is just one other way that Word Press makes it’s easy to build a site that is more powerful than a conventionally built static HTML site.

Owen Winkler has built a plug-in for WordPress 2.0 to allow you to modify the roles- you can find it here: http://redalt.com/wiki/Role+Manager