Add a New Admin User

There may be times when you need to give others admin access to your website. You may someone that writes blog articles for you, or staff that fulfill e-commerce orders.

You don’t want to share your own login credentials (especially if you are one of those people that use the same password for everything!) – what you need is to create a new user account for them.

Adding a user is very simple – in the main admin menu on the left find ‘Users’ then click on ‘Add New’:

The ‘Add New User’ page lets us fill out their details. At the bare minimum we add a username and email for them, ideally we should add their first/last name as well. Password we can ignore is they will create their own password – and for this we leave the ‘Send the new user an email about their account’ checked.

The most important choice on this page is assigning them a Role – a tier system that gives them different levels of control. You should only give a user access to what they need!

WordPress roles

• Subscriber: can sign in and update their profile details, leave comments on posts (if comments are enabled).
• Contributor: in addition to the above contributors can create a new post but cannot add media or publish the post, they can edit their own posts.
• Author: in addition an author can upload media, publish and delete their own posts.
• Editor: an editor has complete control over all the content on the website, but not access to plugins, themes and other site settings.
• Administrator: has complete control over all website functionality and content.

In the image above our website has WooCommerce installed so there are two additional roles:

• Customer: similar to a subscriber but they can also edit their account details and view past orders
• Shop manager: similar to an editor with the complete control over shop functions i.e. managing products and orders, reports etc.

Other plugins (or themes) may add additional user roles.

Finally – click the “Add New User” button. They will be sent an email with a link which will take them to the website to set their password. These often go to spam – get them to check there if they do not see the email.

Top Tip! For security, keep the amount of users on your website to a minimum. The less people that have access to the admin area the more secure your site will be.

The Web Team at Nerd Crossing are here to help you with users and all other aspects of WordPress!