WooCommerce – How to Understand User Roles and Capabilities

On your WordPress site, there are different roles and capabilities assigned to users. This is to give the site owner control over who can access what on the site. Accordingly, different aspects of the site are assigned to different users based on the site owner’s discretion. This article gives you a fundamental idea of WooCommerce user roles and the capabilities of each. 

Additional User Roles in WooCommerce

First, when you install WooCommerce, it registers two additional user roles. These are:

  • Shop Manager
  • Customer

Furthermore, it gives additional capabilities for the Administrator to:

  • Manage WooCommerce Settings
  • View WooCommerce Reports

Now let’s look into the two specific roles for WooCommerce.

Customer Role

Any user who registers using the checkout or signup option is defined as a customer on your site. Presently, the capabilities of customer role are as follows:

  • Have read access, similar to a blog subscriber
  • Can view orders and order history
  • Is able to edit own account details

Shop Manager Role

If you hire someone to manage your store, you have to give them access to your site’s back end. This is where Shop Manager role comes into the picture. This role has the same capabilities as customer role, along with the option to edit WooCommerce settings and products. In addition, this role is capable to view WooCommerce reports as well. The shop manager role is actually similar to the Editor role in WordPress.

Existing User Roles in WordPress

WordPress defines user roles as below:

  • Administrator
  • Editor
  • Author
  • Contributor
  • Subscriber

Administrator

Admins have complete access to all administration aspects of the site. Some of the unique capabilities that define admin role include deleting other user’s pages and posts, updating the core, creating and deleting users, etc. Moreover, administrators can add, delete and manage plugins and themes on the site. And, the administrators will also have the freedom to modify the details of other users, including passwords. Basically, you can restrict giving administrator access to only site owners, and only trustworthy people who can have complete control over your site.

Editor

An editor role allows you to get access and editing rights to other users’ posts. Editor role would be best for the person who is managing the blogs and other posts on your site. Basically, the Editor role is concerned only with the content aspect of your site. Those with Editor role can edit or delete any posts on your site. In addition, they can moderate, edit and delete comments on the site as well.

Author

Authors can create and publish their own posts. However, this role won’t have access to other people’s posts. They can also delete their posts if needed. Also, those with Author role won’t be able to create new categories. However, they can use the existing categories on your site, and create new tags. Also, those with Author role cannot moderate or delete comments on your site, even though they can view them. Similarly, they won’t have access to plugins and themes on your site.

Contributor

A contributor is a user who can write and edit posts on your site. But these users won’t be able to publish posts. Hence, an Editor has to review and publish the posts written by Authors. This is exceptionally useful when you employ freelance writers to generate content for your site. However, one disadvantage is that those with Contributor roles cannot upload files to your site. And as seen above Contributor role won’t have access to plugins, themes, or other users’ posts.

Subscriber

Those in Subscriber role has only read access on your site. In addition, they can manage their own profiles on the site, such as user information and password. Other than that, they can only read posts and leave comments on your site. You may find it useful if your site strategy requires users to sign in to reading blog posts.

Conclusion

 

User roles in WordPress help in providing a stable structure and organization to varied users of your site. Moreover, it helps you create selective access to your site’s content. And, when it comes to WooCommerce, user roles provide more scope in creating layered pricing and wholesale pricing. This article has attempted to provide more clarity regarding various user roles and their potential applications. Also, you must have got an idea regarding some of the plugins that would help you effectively use WooCommerce user roles.

  • user, user management, user roles, capabilities
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