Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin

About this plugin

Questions

Why was this plugin created?

We weren’t satisfied with the current user, role, and permissions plugins available. Yes, some of them are good, but nothing fit what we had in mind perfectly. Some offered few features. Some worked completely outside of the WordPress APIs. Others lacked the GPL license.

So, we just built something we actually enjoyed using.

What’s the difference between Members and MemberPress?

Members and MemberPress solve different problems and are designed to work together.

Members is a free roles and capabilities plugin. It gives you a UI on top of WordPress’ native roles and capabilities system so you can create and edit roles, assign multiple roles to users, and restrict content by role or capability. It’s the right tool when you need to control who can do what inside your site—dashboard access, content permissions, and capability management—without charging for access.

MemberPress is a premium, all-in-one WordPress membership platform built for monetization and much more. In addition to paid subscriptions, payment processing (Stripe, PayPal, and more), recurring billing, coupons, and drip content, MemberPress also includes:

• Courses — a built-in LMS for creating and selling online courses with lessons, quizzes, and progress tracking.
• CoachKit — tools for running coaching programs, including milestones, habits, and client check-ins.
• Community Groups — private member communities and discussion spaces tied to your memberships.
• Member Profiles & Directories — customizable front-end profiles and searchable member directories.
• Email marketing integrations, affiliate program support, and many more premium features.

It’s the right tool when you need to sell access to content, courses, coaching, or communities—and grow a full membership business around it.

The two plugins are complementary, not competing. Many sites use Members for fine-grained role and capability management alongside MemberPress for everything membership-business related. For a full side-by-side comparison, see Members vs MemberPress.

How do I use it?

Most things should be fairly straightforward, but you can also view the docs online.

Can I move roles between sites?

Yes. On the Roles screen, use Export All to download a JSON file containing every role, its capabilities, and your Members plugin settings. To export only some roles, select them in the roles table and choose Export from the Bulk Actions menu.

To import roles, upload a Members export JSON file from the same screen and click Upload and Preview. Members will show each role before anything is changed, so you can import new roles, skip roles, overwrite existing roles, or import conflicting roles under a new slug. Protected roles, such as the built-in Administrator role, your current role, and the site’s default role, cannot be overwritten or renamed.

Minimum PHP requirements.

Members now requires PHP 7.4+

I can’t access the “Role Manager” features.

When the plugin is first activated, it runs a script that sets specific capabilities to the “Administrator” role on your site that grants you access to this feature. So, you must be logged in with the administrator account to access the role manager.

If, for some reason, you do have the administrator role and the role manager is still inaccessible to you, deactivate the plugin. Then, reactivate it.

On multisite, why can’t administrators manage roles?

If you have a multisite installation, only Super Admins can create, edit, and delete roles by default. This is a security measure to make sure that you absolutely trust sub-site admins to make these types of changes to roles. If you’re certain you want to allow this, add the Create Roles (create_roles), Edit Roles (edit_roles), and/or Delete Roles (delete_roles) capabilities to the role on each sub-site where you want to allow this.

How do I use Administrator Rescue (Magic Link) if I’m locked out?

If you can no longer access the WordPress admin (for example, after changing your role or capabilities), you can restore your Administrator access yourself:

1. Go to your site’s login page: yoursite.com/wp-login.php
2. In the address bar, add ?action=members_rescue so the URL is: yoursite.com/wp-login.php?action=members_rescue
3. Enter the email address of an account that has (or had) the built-in Administrator role, or is a Super Admin (multisite).
4. Click “Send Rescue Link”. If that account is eligible, a secure link will be sent to that email (you may need to check spam).
5. Open the link from the email within 15 minutes. Your Administrator role and Members capabilities will be restored, and you’ll be redirected to the login page to sign in.

Only users with the built-in WordPress “Administrator” role (or Super Admins on multisite) can use this feature; custom or cloned roles are not eligible. The link expires after 15 minutes and is limited to a few attempts per IP to prevent abuse.