Sometimes you might need people just edit posts in specific categories in WordPress. There are a few easy steps to restrict editors access to specific post categories in WordPress:
- creating the author account and assign it to the editor role
- create the specific categories
- use a plugin to restrict the editors access to only the specific categories you have created.
Create the author account in WordPress
Creating the author account is quite easy: from the left menu, click on “users” then on “Add New”:
In the new interface, create a new account and in the role drop-down select author:
What can a regular author do?
If you login to WordPress with the author account you have just created, you will notice that the author can view all the posts (including the ones that are written by the admin) but there is no edit button for them. This means that an author has limited access to modifying posts that are written by different users, which partially solves the access to posts issue:
However, if you try to add a new post, you will notice that the standard author is able to write posts in any category:
Restricting authors access to selected post categories using the Author2Categories plugin
Let’s say you want to restrict the author access only to the tutorials subcategory. To do this you need a plugin that will limit the categories for each author. There are some plugins that allow complex rights and role settings, but just restricting the categories it’s a very basic user role management that can be done with a simple and easy plugin: Author2Categories.
Installing the Author2Categories plugin
As with any WordPress plugin, installing is very easy:
- Unzip this plug-in zip gile.
- Upload the author2categories.php to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory of your WordPress instance.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Using the Author2Categories plugin to restrict authors access to selected post categories
Once the plugin is installed, you can locate the administration interface inside the “Tools” menu:
You have to select the author user and click on the categories the author user will be allowed to post:
In my case, the author should be able to add posts in the How to’s/tutorials category (note: you can not select directly the subcategory, you have to select the parent catgegory as well, which basically gives the author the right to add posts to the parent category as well – as a downside):
