What is a WordPress Author?
A WordPress Author is a user role with a limited set of capabilities. An Author is someone who might write an article for your blog, but should not have access to anyone else’s content.
Learn about the Editor role for managing all content on your site.
Who should be a WordPress Author?
You can think of WordPress Author’s quite literally. The word “author” implies someone who writes content. In WordPress, an Author can only publish posts (not pages), but they can also upload images and other media files (to help with the posts they create).
If your company has a specific group dedicated to content marketing, public relations, or any other type of content creation, you might want to assign each person in this department the Author role.
If you run a news site, you could make each of your reporters an Author. They won’t see any of the site wide management screens, or be able to edit the website as a whole, but they’ll still have access to publish articles.
Be careful assigning third-party writers a role of Author. Because Author’s can delete their own content, they could erase a lot of content on your site at any time.
Any time you terminate a relationship with an author, be sure to change their password & lock them out of their account immediately. You should also consider deleting their account, and attributing their content to another user.
WordPress Author’s Capabilities
Here is a list of capabilities that a WordPress Author has.
Posts
- Add New, Publish, Edit & Delete only their own posts
Media & Files
- Upload media, but only edit their own uploads
Comments
- View a list of Comments
Profile
- Can only edit their own profile
Here’s an example of what the Author role CANNOT do:
- no access to any site wide Settings
- no access to Themes or Plugins
- no access to the Pages screen
- no access to the Users screen
- cannot modify Posts or Media that was uploaded by another user
- cannot edit, delete or manage Comments
- cannot import or export content