Why Can't My Users Edit Pages or Media? Understanding WordPress Capabilities

A common point of confusion for WordPress administrators using the User Role Editor plugin is the distinction between editing and creating content. Many users report that even after granting what seem to be the correct permissions, their editors, authors, or custom roles still cannot perform certain actions, such as editing image galleries or creating new pages. This article explains the core reason behind these issues and outlines the most common solutions.

The Core Issue: Default WordPress Capability Behavior

The root cause of many permission problems lies in how WordPress handles capabilities by default. Unlike what might seem logical, WordPress often uses a single capability to govern multiple actions for a post type. Based on community reports, the two most frequent manifestations of this are:

• Editing vs. Creating Pages: WordPress does not use a separate create_pages capability by default. The act of creating a new page is governed by the same capability that allows a user to edit pages: edit_pages. This means if a user has permission to edit pages, they automatically have permission to create them. The User Role Editor free version reflects the core WordPress behavior, so a checkbox for create_pages will not appear. This functionality to split creation and editing into separate capabilities is a feature of the Pro version.
• Editing Media/Attachments: Media items (images, PDFs, etc.) are a custom post type in WordPress. Therefore, the ability to edit an image in a gallery or another user's attachment is not controlled by the upload_files capability alone (which only allows uploading). Instead, it requires post-related capabilities like edit_posts, edit_others_posts, and edit_published_posts.

Common Problems and Their Solutions

Problem 1: User Cannot Create a New Page

Why it happens: You want to allow a user to edit existing pages but prevent them from creating new ones. In the free version of User Role Editor, you cannot separate these actions because WordPress uses edit_pages for both.

Potential Solutions:

• For the Free Plugin: This is a limitation of the core WordPress capability structure. A common workaround is to use custom CSS or JavaScript to hide the "Add New" button from the admin menu for specific roles, though this is a cosmetic fix and does not truly remove the capability.
• Alternative Approach: Investigate alternative plugins or code snippets that can modify the default WordPress capability behavior to enforce this separation.

Problem 2: User Cannot Edit an Image Gallery or Media

Why it happens: The user can upload files (upload_files capability) but cannot edit existing media items. Media items are a post type, so editing them requires additional permissions.

Solution: Ensure the user role has the necessary post capabilities. The most critical ones for editing media are typically:

• edit_posts
• edit_others_posts (to edit media uploaded by other users)
• edit_published_posts

Problem 3: A White Screen When Editing

Why it happens: If a user can access the Quick Edit feature but sees a blank white screen when trying to use the full editor, this is almost never a pure permissions issue. A permissions error would typically result in a "You need a higher level of permission" message.

Solution: A white screen is a classic symptom of a PHP fatal error. To diagnose this:

1. Enable WordPress debugging temporarily by editing your wp-config.php file.
2. Check your web server's error logs. The error logged there will pinpoint the exact cause, which is often a conflict with another plugin or your theme.

Problem 4: Users Not Appearing in Author Dropdown Menus

Why it happens: Some themes and plugins rely on deprecated user-level capabilities (level_0, level_1, etc.) to populate lists of available users.

Solution: As referenced in the sample threads, a known workaround is to enable these deprecated capabilities for the affected user role using User Role Editor. After enabling them, you may need to reassign the role to users to update their profile information.

Conclusion

Many permission challenges stem from understanding the gap between intuitive action names and the technical capabilities that control them in WordPress's core. The User Role Editor plugin provides an interface to manage these capabilities, but it is bound by the rules of the WordPress core. When troubleshooting, always remember that media editing requires post capabilities, and the creation of content is often intrinsically linked to the capability for editing it by default. For issues that present as white screens, look beyond permissions to server-level PHP errors for the true solution.