From time to time, you may need to grant another person access to your WordPress website. You as the site owner and Administrator can create new user profiles and determine the level of access granted to each new user.

From your Dashboard, navigate to Users –> Add New. From there, one by one, you can create new WordPress user profiles.

Enter a user’s name and email address, select a username and password, and then select that user’s role for your website. If you’d like that user to receive an email with their password, be sure to check that box before clicking the blue “Add New User” button.

From there, navigate to All Users and then choose to “Edit” the new user profile you just created.

This is where you can add additional biographical information as well as edit that user’s first and last name, URL, email address and password.

How do I choose the proper user type?

WordPress offers 5 role types for you to choose from.

1. Subscriber – This is the default role type and the role with the least capabilities. Subscribers are limited to reading and commenting on your site’s content.
2. Contributor – The next user level up and the minimum level required to grant someone access to add a new post into Drafts. While Contributors can add content as a post draft, they cannot publish their draft posts.
3. Author – Authors can upload media files and publish their own posts.
4. Editor – Editors can add, edit or delete their own posts, edit others’ posts and approve or delete comments. An Editor cannot modify the theme’s settings or plugins, however.
5. Administrator – You as the website’s owner are the Administrator and you have access to all parts and capabilities of your WordPress website.

Single-author websites typically have 1 sole Administrator, or perhaps 2 if they have a WordPress designer who works on their site. Multi-author blogs commonly establish additional user profiles so their writers can add draft posts for the site’s Editor to later finalize and set to publish. Also, any site administrator interested in using a plugin like Social Author Bio would you need to first create additional user profiles for their website.

If you are concerned about others having long-term access to your website, it is easy to delete their user profile (by visiting the All Users section) once the reason for their access has passed.