WordPress user management means adding people to your site, deciding what each of them can do, and keeping their accounts in order as the site grows. WordPress handles the basics on its own: a Users screen, five built-in roles and a profile for each user. This guide covers what those built-in tools do, where they stop, and how the free WP User Manager plugin, which we make, fills the gaps: custom roles, several roles per user, keeping members out of the dashboard, and letting them manage their own accounts from the front of your site.
What WordPress gives you out of the box
Everything starts under Users in the dashboard.
- All Users lists every account. You can search, filter by role, change the role of several users at once, send someone a password reset link, and delete users. When you delete someone who wrote posts, WordPress asks whether to delete their content or give it to another user.
- Add New User creates an account by hand, with a role and the option to email the new user their login details.
- Profile is where each user edits their own name, email, password and bio, inside the dashboard.
Every user has a role, and the role decides what they can do. WordPress comes with five: Administrator (everything), Editor (all content), Author (their own posts), Contributor (drafts for review) and Subscriber (read and manage their own profile). Our guide to WordPress user roles explains each one.
To let people sign up on their own, go to Settings > General and tick Anyone can register, then set the New User Default Role. For most sites that should be Subscriber.
Where WordPress user management stops
The built-in tools are fine for a handful of editors. They start to pinch on a site with members:
- You can’t create or edit roles. The five roles and their permissions are fixed unless you write code.
- One role per user. The dashboard only lets you give each user a single role.
- Members see the dashboard. Subscribers who log in land in wp-admin, with the admin bar on every page.
- Everything happens in wp-admin. There’s no front-end registration, login, account or profile page for members.
- No help with upkeep: no way to approve signups, disable an account without deleting it, or clear out accounts nobody uses.
A user management plugin fills these in. Here’s how WP User Manager does it.
Managing users with WP User Manager
Install and activate WP User Manager from wordpress.org. It creates front-end login, registration, account and profile pages straight away. Everything in this section is in the free plugin.
Create and edit roles
Turn on Roles Editor under Users > Settings > General > Misc Settings, and a Roles screen appears under Users. It lists every role with how many users have it and how many capabilities it grants or denies.
Click Add New Role to create one, such as “Member” or “Coach”, and Edit Capabilities to choose exactly what a role can and can’t do. A role created here works everywhere WordPress uses roles, including other plugins that check them.
Get Started with the Best WordPress Membership Plugin Today
Connect, Manage and Build your Membership Site
Give users more than one role
Turn on Allow Multiple Roles in the same Misc Settings, and you can give a user several roles: a member who is also a group coach, say. On the All Users screen, WP User Manager replaces WordPress’s single “Change role to” control with Add role and Remove role, so you can add or take away one role for many users at once without touching their others.
Keep members out of the dashboard
Still in Misc Settings, Restrict Dashboard Access sends the roles you choose away from wp-admin, and Admin Bar hides the admin bar for them. Administrators always keep access. Excluded Usernames stops people registering usernames you’d rather keep, such as “admin” or “support”.
Let members manage their own accounts
With members kept out of the dashboard, they need somewhere else to look after their account. WP User Manager’s account page has tabs for their profile Settings (name, email, bio, a profile picture and a cover image), Password, and View Profile. Turn on Allow Members to set their profile privacy under Users > Settings > Profiles > Permissions and they also get a Profile Privacy tab to hide their profile.
The other half of profile management is what other people see. Under Users > Settings > Profiles you choose whether members can upload avatars and cover images, which tabs profiles show, and whether guests or other members can view them. Our profiles settings help article goes through each option, and our comparison of WordPress user profile plugins shows how this compares with other plugins.
Control registration and the emails users get
Under Users > Registration Forms you choose the fields on your sign-up form and can let people pick from roles you allow, which is handy when one site serves different kinds of member. Our guide to creating a custom WordPress registration form covers it. Users > Emails lets you rewrite the registration and password emails WordPress sends, so they sound like your site.
Addons for larger sites
As a site grows, two paid addons cover the upkeep:
- The Security addon lets you disable a user without deleting them (how to temporarily disable users), prevent concurrent logins so accounts aren’t shared, delete or disable inactive accounts after a set number of days (deleting inactive user accounts), and keep block and allow lists of email addresses and domains for registration. It also adds two-factor authentication. Our WordPress security guide covers the rest.
- The User Verification addon makes new users confirm their email address or wait for you to approve them, and you can choose which role is allowed to manage signups. See how to verify user signups.
Other WordPress user management plugins
If roles are all you need, two focused plugins are worth knowing:
- User Role Editor (700,000+ active installs) edits roles and capabilities and does nothing else. It’s the long-standing choice for that one job.
- Members (300,000+ active installs), from the makers of MemberPress, edits roles, lets users have more than one, and can restrict content by role.
Neither gives you front-end accounts, profiles or registration forms. That’s the gap WP User Manager covers, alongside its own roles editor, so most member sites need one or the other rather than both.
Get started with WordPress user management
Install the free WP User Manager plugin for custom roles, multiple roles, dashboard restrictions and front-end accounts. When you need to approve signups or clean up inactive accounts, see pricing for the addon bundles.