WordPress.org

Groups provides group-based user membership management, group-based capabilities and content access control. It integrates standard WordPress capabilities and application-specific capabilities along with an extensive API.

Extensions

• Groups Blog Protect Protect access to blogs by group membership.
• Groups File Access Groups File Access is an extension that allows to provide file download links for authorized users. Access to files is restricted to users by their group membership.
• Groups Forums A powerful and yet light-weight forum system.
• Groups Jigoshop Groups integration for Jigoshop that supports memberships and subscriptions.
• Groups Notifications Adds customizable notifications for events related to Groups.
• Groups PayPal Groups for PayPal allows to sell memberships and subscriptions with Groups.
• Groups Subscriptions A subscription framework for Groups used by other extensions.
• Groups WooCommerce Groups for WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows you to sell memberships.
• Groups 404 Redirect Redirects 404's caused by hits on pages that are protected by Groups.

Features

User groups

• Supports an unlimited number of groups
• Provides a Registered group which is automatically maintained
• Users can be assigned to any group
• Users are added automatically to the Registered group

Groups hierarchy

• Supports group hierarchies with capability inheritance

Group capabilities

• Integrates standard WordPress capabilities which can be assigned to groups and users
• Supports custom capabilities: allows to define new capabilities for usage in plugins and web applications
• Users inherit capabilities of the groups they belong to
• Groups inherit capabilities of their parent groups

Access control

• Built-in access control that allows to restrict access to posts, pages and custom content types to specific groups and users only
• control access to content by groups: shortcodes allow to control who can access content on posts, show parts to members of certain groups or to those who are not members Shortcodes: [groups_member], [groups_non_member]
• control access to content by capabilities: show (or do not show) content to users who have certain capabilities Shortcodes: [groups_can], [groups_can_not]

Easy user interface

• integrates nicely with the standard WordPress Users menu
• provides an intuitive Groups menu
• conceptually clean views showing the essentials
• quick filters
• bulk-actions where needed, for example apply capabilities to groups, bulk-add users to groups, bulk-remove users from groups

Sensible options

• administrator overrides can be turned off
• optional tree view for groups can be shown only when needed
• provides its own set of permissions
• cleans up after testing with a "delete all plugin data" option

Access Control

Access to posts and pages can be restricted by capability.

Any capability can be used to restrict access, including new capabilities.

If access to a post is restricted, only users who belong to a group with that capability may access the post.

Groups defines the groups_read_post capability by default, which can be used to restrict access to certain posts or pages to groups with that capability only. Any other capability (including new ones) can be used to limit access as well.

Framework

• Solid and sound data-model with a complete API that allows developers to create group-oriented web applications and plugins

Multisite

• All features are supported independently for each blog in multisite installations

Feedback

Feedback is welcome!

If you need help, have problems, want to leave feedback or want to provide constructive criticism, please do so here at the Groups plugin page.

Please try to solve problems there before you rate this plugin or say it doesn't work. There goes a lot of work into providing you with free quality plugins! Please appreciate that and help with your feedback. Thanks!

Twitter

Follow @itthinx on Twitter for updates on this and other plugins.

Translations

• Lithuanian translation provided by Vincent G from Host1Free
• Spanish translation provided by Juan Amor from Lama Djinpa

Many thanks for your help!

Introduction

Content Access Control

Access restrictions on posts

On posts an pages (and custom content types) a new meta box titled Access restrictions appears. By checking a capability under Enforce read access, you can restrict access to the post to groups and users who are members of a group with that capability. You need to assign this capability to a group and make users members of that group to allow them to see those posts.

Content visibility for members and non-members

The [groups_member] and [groups_non_member] shortcodes are used to limit visibility of content to users who are members of a group or users who are not members of a group. Multiple comma-separated groups can be specified.

Example: Limiting visibility of enclosed content to registered users.

[groups_member group="Registered"]

Only registered users can see this text.

[/groups_member]

Content visibility based on capabilities

The [groups_can] and [groups_can_not] shortcodes limit visibility of enclosed content to those users who have the capability or those who do not have it. Multiple capabilities can be given.

Example: Showing enclosed content to users who can edit_posts (standard WordPress capability).

[groups_can capability="edit_posts"]

You can see this only if you have the edit_posts capability.

[/groups_can]

Integration in the 'Users' menu:

Users - group membership is managed from the standard Users admin view. Users are automatically added to the Registered group. You can add multiple users to other groups here and also remove them.

Integration in user profiles:

Group memberships can be shown on the user profile page and edited by users who can Administer groups.

This option is disabled by default and can be enabled under Groups > Options > User profiles.

Sections in the 'Groups' menu:

Groups

Here you can:

• add groups
• remove groups
• assign capabilities to groups

Capabilities

This is where you add, remove and manage capabilities.

Capabilities can be assigned to groups and users (1). These capabilities include the standard WordPress capabilities but you can also define additional capabilities for your web-application.

Groups defines the groups_read_post capability by default which can be used to restrict access to certain posts or pages to groups (and users) with that capability only. Additional capabilities can be identified on the Groups > Options admin screen that may be used to limit access.

A user must be a member of a group that has the desired capability to restrict access. For example, in order to apply the groups_read_post capability, the user must belong to a group which has that capability assigned.

(1) Assigning capabilities to users is not integrated in the user interface yet but can be done through API calls.

Options

Administrator override

Administrator overrides can be turned off.

Access restrictions

Post types : Access restrictions can be enabled or disabled for standard (Post, Page and Media) and custom post types. Capabilities : Here specific capabilities can be enabled or disabled to restrict access to posts. The standard groups_read_post capability is enabled by default.

Note that to apply an access restriction on a post, the user must belong to a group which has that capability.

User profiles

Groups can be shown in user profiles, users who can Administer groups can edit group memberships on a user's profile page.

Tree view

The tree view adds a menu item to the Groups menu which shows the group hierarchy.

Permissions

For each role these permissions can be set:

• Access Groups: see information related to Groups.
• Administer Groups: complete control over everything related to Groups.
• Administer Groups plugin options: grants access to make changes on the Groups > Options admin section.

Testing the plugin

A convenient option is provided to delete all data that has been stored by the Groups plugin. This option is useful if you just need to start from fresh after you have been testing the plugin.

Shortcodes

Limit content visibility

These shortcodes are used to limit the visibility of the content they enclose:

• [groups_member]
• [groups_non_member]
• [groups_can]
• [groups_can_not]

See above for examples and descriptions.

Show group information

• [groups_group_info]

This shortcode takes the following attributes to show information about a group:

• group : (required) the group ID or name
• show : (required) what to show, accepted values are: name, description, count, users
• single : (optional) used when show="count" and there is 1 member in the group
• plural : (optional) used when show="count" and there is more than 1 member in the group, must contain %d to show the number of members

Examples:

• [groups_group_info group="Registered" show="count"]

• There [groups_group_info group="1" show="count" single="is one member" plural="are %d members"] in the [groups_group_info group="1" show="name"] group.

Let a user join a group

• [groups_join]

This shortcode takes the following attributes to let a user join a specific group:

• group : (required) the group ID or name
• display_message : (optional) whether to show a confirmation after joining the group; accepted values: true, false; defaults to true
• display_is_member : (optional) whether to show that the user is a member of the group; accepted values: true, false; defaults to false
• submit_text : (optional) specify to change the button text; must contain %s to show the group name

Example:

• [group_join group="Cool"]

Let a user leave a group

• [groups_leave]

This shortcode takes the following attributes to let a user leave a specific group:

• group : (required) the group ID or name
• display_message : (optional) whether to show a confirmation after leaving the group; accepted values: true, false; defaults to true
• submit_text : (optional) specify to change the button text; must contain %s to show the group name

Example:

• [groups_leave group="Cool"]

Show user groups

• [groups_user_groups]

This shortcode lists the current user's or a specific user's groups.

For detailed information about this shortcode, please refer to the Groups plugin page.

Show site groups

• [groups_groups]

This shortcode lists the site's groups.

For detailed information about this shortcode, please refer to the Groups plugin page.