Explain how to manage member roles and permissions in WooCommerce and use them securely

Many website owners and Internet entrepreneurs seek to achieve effective and correct management of the websites that they manage by forming a team for the website or online store that they own.

In order to properly and effectively manage the website or online store, people must be given roles that enable them to access the website and perform their task, in addition to full control over the site by the owner. It is worth noting that there are some practical steps that must be taken to achieve this.

In this article, we will highlight the roles that you can give people to access the control panel of your WordPress site, which depends on the WooCommerce plugin, and what are meant by WooCommerce permissions?

Finally, other practical steps to keep your website secure.

What are the user roles and permissions?

WordPress’s user management system is based on two aspects: roles and permissions. So it is important to know how to use each aspect to effectively manage your online store. Now we will know both the role and the permission (ability):

The role

It is a specific classification on WordPress that gives a group of users the ability to perform a specific task on the site. Each role differs from the other through the set of permissions or capabilities it has to do the task. For example: The role of a writer or editor is completely different from the role of a web developer in terms of its permissions. The editor’s work is limited to writing articles about some products on the store or reviewing comments. But the web developer’s permissions allow him to access the WordPress control panel, modify the online store’s code, and more. So the roles differ from each other with different permissions.

permission (ability)

It is a specific action or procedure that the user is allowed to complete, but subject to some conditions and limits that limit his use of the WordPress control interface.

For example, the permission given to an editor is the ability to edit a post or article on the site.

While the permission given to the web developer is the ability to customize a template or modify the code, and so on.

WordPress roles compared to WooCommerce

After we learned that each role has its own permissions and capabilities to perform some tasks. We will now talk about the six roles of WordPress:

Super Admin: This is a rank that you will only find in WordPress Multisite . This rank gives its holder the ability to manage the settings of all websites on the network.
For example, if you own more than one online store designed using the WooCommerce plugin on the versatile WordPress; The higher manager level enables the user to modify and manage the settings of all stores or websites on the network.
Manager (Admin): This is the highest rank on WordPress sites, which enables its owner to access and modify all the settings of the online store. Its owner also has all the permissions to perform any task, and it also enables its owner to control other roles. You must make sure that this is your rank as the owner of the online store.
Editor: This is the rank responsible for managing the content of the online store. So the editor can add posts about the store’s products and services, with the ability to edit, delete, or publish those posts, and this includes posts by writers or other users of the store. The editor can also add store categories and tags, moderate user comments, and other permissions.
Author: He is responsible for managing the written content of product publications, various articles, and others. The permissions allow him to create, edit and publish his own posts and articles. You also allow him to delete those posts even after they are published on the site, but he is not allowed to delete or edit others’ articles.
Contributor: This is a role similar to Author but with fewer permissions. Its task is limited to creating, modifying and deleting posts. While reading others’ posts, he is not allowed to edit or delete them. It is worth noting that contributor posts are not published directly on the site as they are subject to review before publication.
Subscriber: This role is given to users who register on your site. Of course, we find that it has fewer permissions, such as modifying the profile, reading posts, or writing comments.

WooCommerce Roles

Now we have presented the most important roles for WordPress, but it is worth noting that there are two roles that are added when installing the WooCommerce plugin, which are:

1. Customer role: This is the role given to visitors when registering in the store or requesting to purchase a product. Their permissions are limited to the following:

Read and browse all the products or services offered by the store, just as visitors to blogs do when reading and browsing articles.
The customer can edit his account information, such as name, address, payment information, and other sensitive data, and he can also reset his password.
Finally, the customer can browse his orders and transactions with the store, whether current or previous.

2. The role of the store manager: It is a role that is more capable of disposing of the store’s affairs. The store owner often grants it to the person to manage the store, but without being in charge. This role has all of the client’s permissions along with the following:

The store manager can modify all of the store’s WooCommerce options, such as making some customizations in the store’s template, or modifying some options. In this role, the web designer or developer also edits the site, so he has access to all of the WooCommerce add-on settings options.
He can create and edit products or services on the store. The editor also edits articles for any website or blog by writing content, keywords, choosing images, etc., while reviewing customer comments.
He also has the right to access all WooCommerce reports for the store, review the progress the store is making, and the amount of sales it achieves.
Finally, it can solve customer problems, review their orders, send messages tracking the product purchase process, and other routine steps related to the buying and selling process.

It can be said that the role of the customer corresponds to the role of the subscriber, and the role of the store manager corresponds to the role of the editor in WordPress.

When can you hire your Store Manager role?

After knowing the permissions of the Store Manager role for WooCommerce, you can now give this role to someone to manage your online store. You can assign the Store Manager role when:

Effective management of the store: You want someone to effectively manage the store, such as managing orders, producing reports, and issuing refunds, provided that there are limits that prevent the role owner from modifying the additions, settings, or features of the online store.
Updating products and reviewing orders: The store manager role will enable its owner to view orders and products with the ability to update them, but he will not be able to control the store’s settings on WordPress or change the roles and permissions of other users. It can be said that the role is limited to effective management of the store without interfering in its settings.

It should be noted that the store manager is the highest role in your online store regarding the WooCommerce plugin. Therefore, caution must be exercised when assigning this role to a store employee. But in some cases, you may need to give a user the admin role on your store, but when?

In the following cases:

Store Designer: He is the person responsible for the initial design of the WooCommerce store, creating pages, choosing the store’s design, and other procedures necessary to design and launch an online store via search engines.
Store developer: He is the programmer responsible for developing the store and solving problems related to it, such as security, design, and others. He is the person responsible for making modifications to the store to make improvements and solve problems.
Store Marketer: It is the agency or person responsible for marketing your online store on search engines by analyzing the store’s condition, studying the market and competitors, then developing an effective marketing plan to target more customers.

These tasks will require access to your store manager role to do their work effectively and complete the task by accessing the WooCommerce control panel and settings, but this role is not allowed to enter the General Manager’s WordPress settings and does not have the same powers as changing and controlling roles.

Note: Despite the danger of assigning the role of store manager to someone for your online store, there are some effective steps to maintain your control over the store, which is by owning the hosting and domain for your site on WordPress. We have explained these effective steps in the article: How to build trust between you and your site developer to maintain Protect your data from loss

How do you properly control user permissions?

Here are some practical steps to fully control user permissions:

Granting the appropriate role to the person based on his task: Correct control over the user’s permissions is achieved by granting the user access to the online store according to the task he performs and not granting him more powers than his task. This is important for the security of your store and so that you have full control over the store and prevent users from making any unintentional action or change that is bad for the safety of the store, such as deleting content by mistake or other errors.
Avoid assigning a role that has all permissions: Before assigning a role to someone, you should carefully review the task that he or she will perform. This is in order to avoid the mistake of giving him a role that has many permissions, which will harm you in the end when this person tampers with the settings or makes unintended errors. For example, many sellers in your online store may request the admin role, but the truth of the matter is that few of them need this amount of permissions.

It is worth noting that there are many good additions that can help you control permissions and user roles, as follows:

User Role Editor plugin : It is the most common plugin used by website owners, which enables you to manage user roles and have full control over your website or online store.
Publish press add-on : It is a good addition that enables you to create the role according to the permissions that you want the person to enjoy based on the task assigned to him.

Increase the security of your WooCommerce store

We can say that an online store sometimes requires you to hire people to help you manage the store effectively. Concern increases as the number of people responsible for managing the store increases, and this requires you to implement some security measures to increase your control over your online store. We can say that among the safety measures are:

Secure access to the control panel

Here are some measures that increase security when all team members enter the online store:

You must make sure that the team members working on your online store have a strong username and password.
WordPress will create a password for everyone who logs in to the control panel, and here it is recommended that you let each team member choose their own strong password.
Emphasize the use of a strong password, which must be more complex in order to increase the degree of security. It must contain a capital letter, a small letter, a number and a symbol, and its length must not be less than 12 characters.

Review roles regularly

Regularly reviewing user roles is an important action you must take to have full control over your online store.

Through this procedure you will be able to remove or add new roles to your online store. For example, if you finish working with a web developer whom you have appointed as an administrator to do his work, make sure that you remove him from this role after he finishes his work because this action will prevent him from accessing the WordPress control panel, and this action must be taken with other roles such as author and store manager. And others after he finishes the job.

In short: You must make sure that no one can access the settings of your online store on WordPress unless they are performing a specific job or task and you need it.

Important note: Make sure you have the hosting accounts and domain for WordPress, because this makes you the primary controller of your store. Make sure to change the password for those accounts if you terminate the contract with someone to whom you granted access to those accounts. Remember that as long as the web developer or designer has the hosting account or domain information, he or she will be able to access the WordPress control panel.

Create backups of your store files

Backing up your online store’s data is crucial to the security and maintenance of your WooCommerce store.

A backup, if done on a regular basis, will allow you to restore your site if a member of staff makes an unapproved change to the store or if your store is hacked.

It is worth noting that there are some tools that enable you to make a backup copy of the site, and you can refer to the article “ The 6 Best Add-ons for Taking Backup Copies of Your Site ” to learn more.

Note: It is recommended that you effectively control the backup copy of your online store through some free add-ons or paid plans for some add-ons. And do not rely solely on the free backups that some website hosting providers contain.

In the end, responsibility is the basis for the success of any entrepreneurial project on the Internet, such as websites or electronic stores. It is worth noting that WordPress and Commerce work in harmony with each other for an effective and easy user experience for users.

The main important role for you as an online store owner is to assign the appropriate roles to the work team through the correct management of permissions, with full control over the store to preserve your data and customer data.