Members is a plugin that extends your control over your site. It’s a user, role, and capability management plugin that was created to make WordPress a more powerful CMS.
It puts you in control over permissions on your site by providing a user interface (UI) for WordPress’ powerful role and cap system, which is traditionally only available to developers who know how to code this by hand.
Quick start: what do you want to do?
| I want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Create a new role, or change what a role can do | Role Management |
| Figure out which capability a screen or plugin needs | Capabilities Guide |
| Give a user more than one role | Multiple User Roles |
| Show a page only to logged-in users, or to certain roles | Content Permissions |
| Make the whole site visible only to logged-in users | Private Site |
| Add a login form to a page | Shortcodes |
| Keep some roles out of the WordPress dashboard | Add-Ons: Admin Access |
| Copy my roles to another site | Import / Export Roles |
| Fix roles I’ve broken | Reset Roles or the Administrator Rescue Link |
| Charge for access, or protect whole categories and files | Members and MemberPress |
| Let an AI assistant like Claude, Cursor or Codex manage roles and restrictions | Connect AI Assistants (MCP) |
| Find out whether Members can do something | FAQ and Troubleshooting |
What Members changes when you install it
Nothing on the front end of your site. Members doesn’t restrict any content until you set it up, and every add-on starts switched off. It adds its own capabilities (like restrict_content, list_roles, and edit_roles) to the Administrator role so administrators can use the Members screens.
The relationship of users, roles, and capabilities
This is the most important thing to understand with this plugin. If you don’t understand this concept, you won’t understand what this plugin does. This is not a concept created by the plugin. It’s how WordPress works.
Users are people who have registered on your site. In WordPress, users are assigned one or more roles. Roles define what a user can and can’t do.
Roles are a way of grouping users. Each user on your site will have at least one role. Roles are a set of capabilities. It is important to note that roles are not hierarchical. For example, “Administrator” is not higher than “Subscriber” in WordPress. You could literally give the Subscriber role more capabilities than the Administrator role. It’s very important that you grasp this concept. If you do want to rank roles for managing users, see the Role Hierarchy add-on.
Capabilities give meaning to roles. It’s a permissions system. They’re a way of saying a role can do something or a role can’t do something (e.g., Role A can edit_posts, Role B can’t activate_plugins, etc.). The Capabilities Guide covers the ones people ask about most.
How to use the plugin
Members includes all of its add-ons bundled in the plugin, but they’re off by default, so you only run what you actually need. To enable an add-on, go to Members → Add-Ons in your WordPress admin and click the Activate toggle on any add-on you want to use. See Add-Ons for what each one does.
The plugin’s main options are under Members → Settings. See Settings for a walkthrough.
If you’re a developer, you can also check the page with a bunch of snippets.
Plugin Features
- Roles: Edit, create, clone, and delete roles, as well as the capabilities assigned to them.
- Multiple User Roles: Give one, two, or even more roles to any user.
- Explicitly Deny Capabilities: Deny specific capabilities to specific user roles.
- Content Permissions: Control which users (by role) have access to post content.
- Shortcodes: Shortcodes to control who has access to content, plus a login form.
- Widgets: A login form widget and users widget to show in your theme’s sidebars.
- Private Site: Make your site and its feed completely private.
- Administrator Rescue Link: Restore your Administrator access from the login page if you can no longer access WP Admin.
- Reset Roles: One-click reset of the five default WordPress roles to their original capabilities from Members → Settings → Miscellaneous.
- Import / Export Roles: Export roles (and optionally plugin settings) to a JSON file, and import them into another site with conflict detection and preview.
- AI Assistants (MCP): Let Claude, Cursor, Codex and other MCP apps look up and manage roles, users’ roles, content restrictions, settings and add-ons, with read-only mode, “are you really sure?” checks and an activity log. See Connect AI Assistants.
Add-ons
All add-ons are bundled with Members and can be activated from Members → Add-Ons. The Add-Ons page explains each one in detail.
- Admin Access: Control which roles can reach the WordPress dashboard.
- Role Hierarchy: Rank roles so users can only manage users with lower roles.
- Block Permissions: Show or hide individual blocks by login status, role, or capability.
- Category and Tag Caps: Separate capabilities for managing, editing, deleting, and assigning categories and tags.
- Core Create Caps: Separate “create” capabilities for posts and pages.
- Privacy Caps: Capabilities for WordPress’ privacy and personal data tools.
- Role Levels: Set the old user “level” of a role, for plugins that still rely on it.
- Integrations: ACF, Easy Digital Downloads, GiveWP, Meta Box, and WooCommerce capabilities, grouped neatly in the role editor.
What Members doesn’t do
Members manages permissions. It doesn’t take payments, handle registrations, or protect uploaded files. See What Members doesn’t do for the full list and what to use instead.