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/ PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus

PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus

By PublishPress

User Management & Authentication / User Registration & Login

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus Review - In-Depth Analysis

PublishPress Capabilities is an access control plugin for WordPress. Manage user roles, permissions, and admin menus easily. Customize user capabilities and streamline your admin interface.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.08/10

User Rating

4.7/5 (based on 143+ reviews)

Active Installations

100,000+

Update Frequency

Excellent It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5.77 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

PublishPress Capabilities is the access control plugin for WordPress. You can control all the capabilities and permissions on your WordPress site. We built this user role editor plugin so you have an easy and powerful way to manage user capabilities.

You can use PublishPress Capabilities to manage all your WordPress user roles, from Administrators and Editors to Authors, Contributors, Subscribers and custom roles. Each user role can have the exact capabilities that your site needs.

PublishPress Capabilities can clean up your post editing screen, admin area, and even the Profile screen. You can decide what authors see when they are writing posts. You can hide any feature on the Gutenberg or Classic Editor screens. You can remove items in the WordPress dashboard and inside user accounts screens.

The Pro version of PublishPress Capabilities has many extra features, including the ability to edit admin menu links, clean up the post editing screen, block admin pages by URL, and much more.

Comparing to Alternatives

PublishPress Capabilities offers a comprehensive user role and capability management system with several direct competitors in the WordPress ecosystem.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly customizable with granular control over user roles and capabilities
Strong support team responsive to user queries
Integrates well with other PublishPress plugins for extended functionality
Allows complex permission setups for different user groups
Regular updates addressing security and functionality

Weaknesses

Can become complex and challenging to configure for advanced setups
Security history includes multiple medium to critical vulnerabilities, though fixed in recent versions
Some users may find the interface less intuitive compared to simpler alternatives
Requires careful management to avoid privilege escalation risks

User Sentiment Analysis

With an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 from 143 reviews, users generally express high satisfaction with the plugin's capabilities and support, though a small minority report issues.

Positive highlights

"Absolutely speechless, insanely well-made plugin!" — digieyedesigns
"Finally found something that has exactly what I needed." — armnetworking
"Excellent support and full customization." — shandonc
"Really helpful plugin with great support." — Filip Krejcik
"Super flexible permissions system." — vaclavek

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Complexity can lead to unique configuration challenges
Security vulnerabilities have been reported historically, requiring updates
Interface may not be intuitive for all users
Potential risk of privilege escalation if not properly managed

Who Should Use This?

Best for

This plugin is ideal for site administrators and developers who need detailed and flexible control over user roles and permissions, especially in complex or multisite WordPress environments.

Not ideal for

It may not be suitable for users seeking a simple, out-of-the-box solution or those uncomfortable managing security updates and complex configurations.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers extensive role and capability management features suitable for most users.

Pro version (69 - 249 USD / year)

The premium version includes advanced features such as enhanced permission controls, priority support, and integration with other PublishPress tools.

Final Verdict

PublishPress Capabilities is a powerful and flexible plugin that excels in providing granular user role and capability management. Its strong support and frequent updates make it a reliable choice for complex WordPress sites. However, users should be aware of its complexity and past security vulnerabilities, ensuring they keep the plugin updated and configurations carefully managed.

For those needing advanced customization and control, this plugin stands out among its alternatives. Users seeking simplicity or minimal maintenance might consider other options, but overall, PublishPress Capabilities offers excellent value and functionality for its target audience.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus plugin.

User role editor

User capabilities

Access permissions

Screenshots

FAQ

PublishPress Capabilities is a user role editor that offers you the ability to backup and restore your WordPress user permissions. This feature is very helpful if you want to test out changes on your site, or you’ve installed a new plugin that has changed your site’s permissions.

Changing permissions in WordPress can be a tricky task. It’s possible to lock yourself or others out of some important features. So, we’ve built a way to keep your site safe.

Every time you change your permissions, the PublishPress Capabilities plugin will automatically create a backup. If you make a mistake, go to the “Backup” menu link and click the “Restore” tab. Here you can browse through the most recent 20 automatic backups. The plugin also saves a backup from when you first installed PublishPress Capabilities. And you can click the “Backup” tab to manually create backups.

Click the yellow “Restore Selected Roles” button and you’ll be able to roll back to a previous version.

Whenever you choose a backup, the plugin will show all the permissions in that backup. Important changes in permissions are highlighted:

A green role title means the role does not exist in your current set.
A green capability is set in the role backup, but not the current role.
A stuck-through capability is set in the current role, but not the role backup.

WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. You can create beautiful store with themes customized to your brand and industry and you’ll find 1,000’s of tools and popular integrations.

The PublishPress Capabilities plugin enables you to control permissions for the WooCommerce plugin and also WooCommerce user roles. You can use this plugin as a WooCommerce user role editor. Go to the “Capabilities” link in your WordPress admin menu. In the main area of your screen will see options for WooCommerce Products, Orders and Coupons. These permissions cover editing, deleting and reading.

In the right sidebar, you can also enable permissions for WooCommerce taxonomies. Check the boxes for Product categories, Product tags, and Product shipping classes. After you check those boxes and refresh your screen, you will see Manager, Edit, Assign and Delete options for Product categories, Product tags, and Product shipping classes.

The Pro version of PublishPress Capabilities allows you to block access to admin menu links in WooCommerce. This is useful because WooCommerce has very limited options for controlling who can access the admin screens. When you first install WooCommerce, you’ll see four top-level menu links, plus sub-menus. All of these links are available to users in the Administrator and Shop Manager roles:

WooCommerce
Products
Analytics
Marketing

It is possible to control who can access these links by using the PublishPress Capabilities Pro plugin. After installing PublishPress Capabilities Pro, go to “Capabilities”, then “Admin Menus” in your WordPress admin area. n the top-left corner of this screen, choose the role that you want to edit. Scroll down and you can enter a red X for any menu link that you don’t want users in that role to access. This is a great way to customize a WooCommerce role such as Shop Manager. This approach works for the core WooCommerce plugin and can also be used for WooCommerce add-on plugins such as WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Shipping, and WooCommerce Bookings. PublishPress Capabilities can help you manage WooCommerce permissisons.

Click here to learn about WooCommerce menu permissions.

Contributors and developers

“PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.