I honestly didn’t know the differences because I haven’t really tried User Role Editor (URE). So, I took a few minutes to test it out to see what’s different. The following is a small list of things that are immediately noticeable.
- Members doesn’t put spammy ads in your admin. URE does (you have to pay $29 to get rid of the ads).
- URE doesn’t properly recognize un-editable roles other than bbPress, which will break some plugins.
- URE doesn’t group capabilities. Members does group these so you can have an easier time figuring them out.
- Members uses the WordPress admin design (UI). URE doesn’t.
- Members properly handles both granted and denied capabilities. URE only handles granted caps.
- Members shows you exactly how many users a role has.
- Members shows the granted and denied capability counts.
- Members has great APIs for other plugin developers to build add-ons.
I’ve primarily focused on the role/cap editing screens and features. The better UI in Members is probably worth it alone. Of course, I’m going to be a bit biased and focus on the good things about Members because I’m the plugin author. The best thing to do is try them both out.
Thanks a lot for your answer.
I have installed the two plugins so that i can verify the differences you have mentioned.
– URE doesn’t group capabilities. Members does group these so you can have an easier time figuring them out.
– Members shows you exactly how many users a role has.
– Members shows the granted and denied capability counts.
-> I agree with you Members is well organized compared to URE. The capabilities are divided by category : pages, articles, appearance..I can find also other categories that depend on the plugins installed.
– Members properly handles both granted and denied capabilities. URE only handles granted caps.
–>maybe when you click at ‘ show deprecated capabilities’ it appears ?
– Members doesn’t put spammy ads in your admin. URE does (you have to pay $29 to get rid of the ads).
– URE doesn’t properly recognize un-editable roles other than bbPress, which will break some plugins
–> I am not sure about that since I didn’t find a way to test it but it seems interesting.
When i have tested URE I’ve realized that contrary to Members it gives you the possibility to edit the capabilities for each user and not only for roles. You are not obliged to create a new role to associate it to one user. You can just edit directly his capabilities.
You can also choose to copy permissions from that role. This saves you from having to enable all capabilities again.
And you can reverse the capabilities if you want too.
Finally,i wonder if Members gives the possibility to give capabilities according to widgets. I mean..Is it possible to allow some users and not others to have access to some widgets and to see some part of the page ?
– Members properly handles both granted and denied capabilities. URE only handles granted caps.
–>maybe when you click at ‘ show deprecated capabilities’ it appears ?
No, that’s a different thing altogether. “Deprecated capabilities” are capabilities that are no longer used by WordPress.
When i have tested URE I’ve realized that contrary to Members it gives you the possibility to edit the capabilities for each user and not only for roles. You are not obliged to create a new role to associate it to one user. You can just edit directly his capabilities.
WordPress has plans to remove the ability to add capabilities to specific users. Therefore, I chose not to support this feature in Members. I don’t want my users using a feature that will likely no longer work in the future.
There are also several architectural issues with something like this, which is why developers are not recommended to use this. I won’t go into all the technical details here, but I’d highly recommend avoiding per-user caps.
You can also choose to copy permissions from that role. This saves you from having to enable all capabilities again.
Members allows you to do this. Just “clone” any role from the Roles screen.
And you can reverse the capabilities if you want too.
This can actually be a bad thing that will break users’ access to many plugins that add capabilities on activation.
Finally,i wonder if Members gives the possibility to give capabilities according to widgets. I mean..Is it possible to allow some users and not others to have access to some widgets and to see some part of the page ?
That’s actually outside the scope of roles/capabilities by default. Core WordPress doesn’t allow this, so it’s a nice feature if you need that kind of access to widgets. Most of my plugin’s users don’t, so this feature is not important for Members.
Thanks a lot for your reply!
Thank you for your thorough answers. I have been using URE for years and I have a different end goal in place and need a better solution. I wanted to find out the differences and this helped a lot.
