By default, only WordPress users with the Administrator role can reach the Church Admin backend. This page explains how to give other people access to parts of the plugin — either by role, or by name — without making everyone an administrator.
How access works by default
When you first install Church Admin, only administrators can open the admin area. Anyone added to your address list — whether they registered themselves or you created their entry — is given WordPress’s basic Subscriber role. Subscribers can’t create posts or pages, and they can’t do anything in Church Admin either. That’s deliberate: access is locked down until you choose to open it up.
There are two ways to grant access to non-administrators: Roles and Permissions. You can use either, and they suit different situations.
Roles — the simple approach
Go to Church Admin → Settings → Roles. Here you can set each part of the plugin to be accessible by a particular WordPress role — Subscriber, Contributor, Author, Editor or Administrator. By default everything is set to Administrator (in practice, anyone allowed to manage site options).
This is the easiest and safest method. You decide, for example, that Editors can manage the calendar and address list, and once someone has the Editor role they automatically get that access. It’s ideal when a few trusted people help run the site and you’re happy for them to have a broader WordPress role.
The trade-off is that WordPress roles also carry other capabilities — an Editor, for instance, can edit posts and pages across your whole site, not just Church Admin. If that’s more than you want to hand out, use name-based Permissions instead.
Permissions — access by name
Name-based permissions let you give someone access to specific parts of the plugin without giving them the ability to write posts or pages. This is the better choice when you want a volunteer to manage, say, the rota or small groups, but nothing else.
Two things need to be in place first:
- The person must have a WordPress user account.
- Their address list (directory) entry must be linked to that user account.
Then go to Church Admin → Settings → Permissions. For each item in the list, start typing the names of the people you want to grant access to, then click Save at the bottom. Those people can now reach just those parts of the plugin.
Administrators can always access everything, regardless of what’s set here — so you don’t need to add yourself.
Resetting if it goes wrong
If your permissions end up in a muddle, you can start again. On the Permissions screen, tick Delete all user permissions and click Save. This clears every name-based permission and returns you to plain role-based access, so you can set them up again from scratch.
Which should I use?
- Use Roles if a small number of trusted people help run the site and you’re comfortable with them having a standard WordPress role. It’s simpler to maintain.
- Use Permissions if you want to hand specific jobs to specific people while keeping everyone else — and their posting rights — locked down.