Allow a user to edit their own page and profile only

Question

I am creating a WP site that has a list of members, where each member (about 20) has their own page. Each member page is created by an admin, but now i am stuck.

I would like the content of each member page to be editable only by the admin and the member.

eg Admin creates a page for John. John can log in, and is displayed a link to his page (and his page only), where he can edit the content on that page. Tony cannot edit Johns page content.

How can i achieve this? Is this possible out of the box with wordpress? Do i need some plugins?

ps. All of my members have the role of Author, so when the admin creates the page, the Author of the page can be set to the member.

Answer 1

Read the WordPress Codex on the subject of Roles http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities

To confirm that the system works the way you want, as an admin create a test member with the author role and sample content as you would for a 'real' member. Then sign out and sign in using your test member's credentials and see what capability that test person has vs. what you want them to have.

The Author or Contributor role should do what you describe. Otherwise you can always generate a custom role cor your site which has the capabilities that you want and assign your members the custom role.

Answer 2

One way would be to create a new page each time a user is created. Store that page id in the user meta. If you're doing all the editing on the front end, then it's as easy as doing a conditional check to see if the page id stored matches the one in the user-meta data or if the user is an admin, otherwise deny access.

It'd be even easier if you're doing it via posts, because then you just create a post for the user with the user as an author. By default, WP allows all users to edit their own posts, as well as admins. As below, you can also store the users profile info/content right in the post meta-data.

A third option yet, would just be to create a template for the page that displays the users profile and editing options, and have it pull the users id. Then you can set it up so it stores all the profile info in the users meta-data. This of course would rule out admins, as by default it would show them their own page, unless you put in a form and field for the admins that they can pull up other users profiles by name/id whatever.

Answer 3

Okay John, I get what you are trying to do, unfortunately, you can't do that with the out of the box WordPress (wp) installation.

WP users are broken down into user levels like Admin, Editor, Author, etc. Each level has its own set of capabilities.

The problem with having all your members with the same user level is that they all possess the same capabilities. Basically, each member with the same user level can read/write anything the other member can.

Have you ever heard of networking your WP site? It's very easy. Just follow these instructions

Once you have a network. Create a site for each member. If you are using BuddyPress, than activate the plugin on the network level.

Now the default role of each member will be admin, however you are the super admin of the network. They can only read and edit their portion of your WP network. You can change their role to Author for their individual site and provide for them the theme or page to edit there.

Another great way to manage your users is with this plugin: User Role Editor

You can switch between users to test your results with this plugin: User Switching

Use this plugin (Admin Menu Editor) to hide admin menu options for each user, as well as, customize what you want them to see.