The WordPress User Roles and Capabilities system provides a robust way to control user access to sensitive data on your WordPress site. It's not only possible to create custom roles and assign capabilities to those roles, but it's also possible to assign content type capabilities to your custom post types. This adds another layer of control over your site content, especially if you require different levels of access. In this session, we'll be taking a look at the specific functionality that exists in the register_post_type function that pertains to post type capabilities, learn how this works, and how to best make use of it.

1. Jonathan Bossenger
Let’s Code:
Learn.WordPress.org
Custom content & custom capabilities

2. 2
👋🏽
Welcome!
As you join, please make sure you have your local
development environment ready:
• A local WordPress installation
• A code editor like VSCode or Sublime
• The test bed plugin
• https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/wp-
learn-roles-
capabilities/releases/download/1.0.2/wp-learn-
roles-capabilities.1.0.2.zip
Then, let everyone know in the chat where you’re
joining us from…
Hello!
○ My name is Jonathan Bossenger
○ From Cape Town, South Africa
○ Developer educator at Automattic
○ Sponsored to work with the Training Team
○ jonathanbossenger.com

3. Learn.WordPress.org
Let's code!
Custom content &
custom capabilities
Jonathan Bossenger

4. Announcements
○ Welcome, and thank you to Tracy for co-hosting.
○ Please let me know if you can’t see this slide!
○ We are presenting in focus mode, but please feel free to enable your video.
○ You are welcome to ask questions.
○ You are welcome to post questions in the chat, or unmute to ask questions.

5. Announcements
○ Make sure your local install is ready
○ https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/wp-learn-roles-
capabilities/releases/download/1.0.2/wp-learn-roles-capabilities.1.0.2.zip
○ If I am going too fast, please let me know!
○ We will be posting this session to https://wordpress.tv/ afterwards
○ For more WordPress focused content please visit https://learn.wordpress.org/

6. Learning Outcomes
1. How custom capabilities work on custom post types.
2. The capability_argument of register_post_type.
3. The capabilities argument of register_post_type.
4. The map_meta_cap argument of register_post_type.

7. Objectives
1. Setup and review the test bed plugin
2. Create a custom post type story
3. Create a role “writer” to manage their own stories by:
a. Setting the capability_type argument
b. Setting the capabilities argument
c. Setting the map_meta_cap argument
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Let’s code.

9. Resources
○ https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/wp-learn-roles-capabilities/releases/download/1.0.2/wp-learn-
roles-capabilities.1.0.2.zip
○ https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/users/roles-and-capabilities/
○ https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/roles-and-capabilities/
○ https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/register_post_type/
○ https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/map_meta_cap/