Using the Members plugin with Meteor Slides

One of the new features in Meteor Slide 1.4 that needs covering in more detail is support for the Members plugin. Using Members, you can control which roles can create and edit slides and slideshows, and which can change the slides settings.

By default slide posts use the same capabilities as blog posts and only admins can change the slide settings. So admins, editors, and authors can create new slides, and contributors can create slide post drafts. This is straightforward, but not exactly ideal.

Most of the time I only want the admin and editor to create and edit slides. And what if you want to give an editor access to the settings? This is where Members comes in handy.

Customizing roles with Members

When you activate the Members plugin it creates the custom capabilities for the slides post type. None of the roles have these custom capabilities, so the slides menu disappears for all the roles.

Now you can go to Users -> Roles and edit the roles you want to add the slides capabilities to. Typically I will add all the capabilities to the admin role, and add all the capabilities aside from meteorslides_manage_options to the editor role. With this setup, both the admin and editor can manage slides, but only the admin can manage the slideshow settings.

Changing the Members Settings

One thing to note, the Members plugin has several features that are activated separately. Two of these are active when you install the plugin, the Role Manager and Content Permissions. Content Permissions adds an extra metabox to the slide, post, and page editors, so if you aren’t planning to use that, I would suggest going to Settings -> Members and deactivating the Content Permissions feature.

Other awesome things you can do with Members

I install Members on every site I build so that I can create a streamlined experience for the end user. None of the default roles are ever quite right for the client. I want them to be able to edit all the content on their site including slides, forms, and widgets, but I don’t want to make them an admin and give them access to the WordPress settings or the ability to install new themes and plugins.

So to create the perfect role for the client, I make them an editor and customize the capabilities of this role to include just what the user needs to manage their site.

One example is removing the links menu. This feature is almost never used, so I avoid a lot of confusion by just removing the manage_links capability, which completely hides the Links menu from that role. An example of something I always add is the edit_theme_options capability. This allows editors to manage theme options, menus, and widgets, but won’t let them switch themes or install new ones.

If you aren’t already using Members, go try it out and be sure to leave a good rating for this awesome plugin!