Editors vs Administrators
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From my standpoint, deleting and adding pages should only be done by an administrator, not an editor. There are circumstances where we may want someone to moderate tags, categories, comments, and links, without the control of removing pages. To be honest, there is little difference between the powers of an administrator and an editor, and it seems a bit muddied to me. Either this needs to be cleared up so that there can be different functions, or a different level needs to be created. My personal thinking is that any major changes to the site should only be done by an administrator, but he/she may wish to allow individuals to moderate the website for spam, inappropriate comments, etc. There just seems to be too much control for a lower level position to me.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
The purpose of the editor role is to have someone who can manage comments on the site but not the site itself. Thus editors can edit posts, pages and comments, but they cannot change the theme or site settings, add users, or delete the site. Those actions can only be performed by administrators.
We already have a user role that can’t edit pages. Authors can only edit posts, and only posts that they themselves wrote. They can also moderate comments on their own posts.
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Yes, I realize that :)
I am simply saying that there is a need for an intermediate level. It’s good that authors can moderate their own posts, but there is a need for a moderator of the entire site for all posts and authors without the ability to modify the site.
Adding, changing, or deleting a page is by definition modifying the site, which is why I believe that that should only be given to the administrator or owner of the site.
I’ve spent a while developing this site and it’s still in development as I learn more and see different needs. I have trusted people to moderate the entire sites comments, but I don’t want for them to have the ability to modify pages either intentionally or accidentally.
FYI, it took me a while to get back to this post. I had to log into my e-mail. I had expected it to show up under the dashboard but it didn’t. There needs to be a faster way to get to a post than that, and if there is I would welcome knowing how.
Thanks!
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Adding, changing, or deleting a page is by definition modifying the site, which is why I believe that that should only be given to the administrator or owner of the site.
We are dealing with different definitions of “site” here. As far as the WordPress software is concerned (as these user roles are the same on WordPress.com and WordPress.org) pages are not the site. Pages are a type of content, and editors are essentially users that can manage all content on the site.
I have trusted people to moderate the entire sites comments, but I don’t want for them to have the ability to modify pages either intentionally or accidentally.
I understand this, but such an option does not exist in the WordPress software. A change like this will need to be made in the core WordPress project before we’d be able to implement it on WordPress.com.
Note that pages and posts do have a revision history, so should someone accidentally modify a page you can edit the page in the WP-Admin editor and roll back to a previous revision. You’ll also be able to see exactly who made the revision.
And should an editor accidentally delete a page, the page can be restored from trash. Someone would have to take the additional step to delete the page from trash to have the page removed completely. That wouldn’t be an accident, and hopefully you don’t have any contributors who’d intentionally try to damage your site.
FYI, it took me a while to get back to this post.
To find old forum threads you need to visit your forum profile. Click on the word “member” that appears under your username next to your picture in this thread, or click on your username that shows at the top of the forum page to reach that.
I agree it would be easier if this was linked in your dashboard. However, compared to the rest of WordPress.com the codebase of the forum is ancient, and there is no easy way to integrate it. However, we are working on a solution to make all support interactions available in your profile page to easily access. But it will still be a while before that will be ready.
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Thank you. That helps a lot. And I realize that a lot of what I have said comes from a different perspective, and developers all have different views of how a project should unfold, even among developers on the same project. Thank you for your patience and time. I’ve learned some new things through this.
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