WordPress allows you to have four different roles and it is important to understand each role before creating a new user. The four user roles are; administrator, editor, author and contributor.

Administrator: An administrator has full and complete ownership of a website, and can do absolutely everything. This person has complete power over posts/pages, comments, settings, themes, plugins, import, users – everything. Nothing is off-limits, including deleting everything

Editor: An editor can view, edit, publish, and delete any posts/pages, moderate comments, manage categories, manage tags, manage links and upload files/images

Author: An author can edit, publish and delete their posts, as well as upload files/images

Contributor: A contributor can edit their posts but cannot publish them. When a contributor creates a post, it will need to be submitted to an administrator for review. Once a contributor’s post is approved by an administrator and published, however, it may no longer be edited by the contributor. A contributor does not have the ability to upload files/images.

Steps to add the user:

  • Log in to your WordPress Dashboard (typically ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php’, replacing ‘yourdomain.com’ with your actual domain name)
  • Go to ‘Users’ on the menu on the left
  • Click the option ‘Add New’ at the top of the page
  • Fill in the required information, choose a password for them, check the box “Send this password to the new user by email” and select the role you wish to give them using the dropdown.

Your new user will get their password in the email with instruction on how to log in. Once logged in they can change their password and any other info (except their username) by editing their profile.