The Divi Role Editor is a powerful group of settings that allow you to limit the types of actions users can take on your website. In this documentation, we'll go over the role editor, how to access it, and how to use it. Let's dive in!

Using the Divi Role Editor, you can limit the types of actions that WordPress users of different roles can take.

This is a great way to limit the functionality available to your customers or guest authors to ensure they only have the necessary options.

You can disable certain actions within the Divi Builder for each role, limiting how the builder can be used by users of that role.

This is the perfect way for WordPress freelancers and smaller web design agencies to hand off websites to their clients while simultaneously limiting what the client can do within Divi.

By limiting more advanced features, you can make the Divi Builder easier to understand while preventing them from accessing features that may be used to ruin your beautiful designs!

Here is a great example. Let's say you just finished building a new Divi website for your client and are ready to hand it off.

Everything looks perfect, and you want to ensure that your client doesn't change certain design elements, settings, or functionalities of the website that are important for it to continue working well.

However, you want them to be able to make certain updates like, for example, the text on their About Us page. This is the perfect opportunity to use the Divi Role Editor.

The first step is to give their user account the role of Editor. You can do that by visiting Users → Edit Users → Role → Editor.

Next, we'll navigate to the Divi Role Editor and click on the Editor tab.

This will allow us to toggle on and off access to certain functionality and settings that Editors can have.

In this scenario, we only want to let our clients edit the text and images of the About Us page, but something else is needed to do with advanced settings or the page layout.

So, we're going to toggle a few things off. You can do things like:

Take a look at the image below to see the settings I've toggled off.

As you can see in the image above, I've disabled settings like:

When configuring the Editor's role, your client now has only the tools to edit their content without risking accidentally messing up the layout or advanced settings.

To access the Divi Role Editor, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard → Divi → Role Editor.

Now, let's dive deeply into the Role Editor settings and options within the Divi Role Editor.

Let's take a quick tour of the Role Editor Dashboard.

When you first click into the Role Editor, a dashboard will appear with tabs at the top listing the different types of roles available on your website, such as:

Clicking on each tab will allow you to configure the settings and accessibility of that role. Within each role tab, you'll be able to edit:

Granting administrator access will give someone access to all the administration features within your site.

This is a top-level role and should only be granted with care. Typically, all the options are enabled for the admin to access your website completely.

The Editor role is typically reserved for users who need the ability to write, edit, publish, and manage blog posts, including posts created by other users.

A user with author access can publish and manage their own blog posts. However, they cannot edit or manage posts made by others.

Users with contributor access can write and manage their posts but cannot publish them live. They also cannot access or edit others' posts.

You can give the Shop Manager role to someone to manage the shop without making them a WordPress admin.

They will have WordPress editor capabilities. They'll have all the customer's rights and can manage all settings within WoCommerce, like creating and editing products, etc. This also gives them access to all WooCommerce reports.

Here, you can adjust the highest-level theme settings, granting or limiting access to the core Divi functionalities:

Here, you can limit high-level actions within the builder, such as the ability to edit, delete, or move items. A common implementation of these settings may be to enable the editing of items but disable the ability to move or delete items within the builder. You can also disable access to the Divi Builder altogether.

Here, you can control the user's access to the Divi Library and disallow users from editing Global Modules. Since changes to global modules often have far-reaching implications, it is sometimes safer to keep your clients from editing them.

Settings tabs refer to the three categories of options available within the settings box of every module, row and section. These settings tabs are:

Generally speaking, everything you need to build an awesome Divi website can be found in the General Settings, but if you want to get a little more advanced, you can move on to the Design Setting and Custom CSS tabs. Often, it's a good idea to disable these latter tabs for your clients.

In addition to disabling all settings tabs, you can also control the types of settings available within those tabs. This gives you even more fine-tuned control over what your clients can edit. For example, you should only allow your clients to control the Text content of modules but stop them from adjusting colors and layout options.

Finally, you can also disable the use of entire modules. When a module is disabled for a user, they cannot edit modules of that type or add new modules to the page. For example, you may disable every mode except the Text and Image modules to streamline things for your clients.

Grant or limit access to the Divi Support Center. You can determine if a role can contact support, grant remote access to the Element Themes support team, access Divi documentation, put the website in safe mode, and more.

This section grants or limits access to the elements a role can export from your website and import to your website.

When using the Divi Role Editor, keep these best practices in mind.

Before setting the Divi Role Editor settings, it's important to understand user roles in WordPress.

You want to give one user type only a little access to important structural elements and advanced settings on your website when they are just there to write blog posts. Simplifying access to certain user types simplifies things for your client by giving them a less overwhelming CMS to navigate.

Sometimes, when we set these rules, we need to be aware of their real-life impact. We recommend logging in to your website as different user types to see how these configurations take effect in real time.

Want to learn more? Check out these resources on the ET blog!