Add a user to WordPress

2 minutes of preparation, and the rest follows on its own.

• Your website address, for example your-company.co.uk.
• Your usual login details for WordPress, the ones you use to edit your site.
• A computer, ideally. It is not compulsory, everything works on a phone too. It is just that the WordPress menu stays on show at the left on a computer screen, whereas it folds away on mobile. If all you have is a phone, turn it sideways and you will see the same thing.

Nothing else. No software to install, no bank card, no extra subscription.

The dashboard is the private part of your site. Your visitors never see it.

The direct address. Type your address followed by /wp-admin, for example your-company.co.uk/wp-admin. You land on a login screen.

Sign in with your usual account.

• If you land on a grey page with a menu on the left, you are in the right place.
• If the /wp-admin address leads nowhere, a security plugin has renamed the entrance. Go through your hosting account instead, which almost always offers a one click login button to WordPress.
• If you have lost your password, the Lost your password link on the login screen sends you a new one by email. And if the email does not arrive, we go back through the hosting, which our dedicated tutorial covers.

In the left hand menu, look for the Users section, recognisable by its little silhouette.

Click it, then Add New at the top of the page.

The shortcut, if you prefer. The address your-company.co.uk/wp-admin/users.php shows the list of users directly, and your-company.co.uk/wp-admin/user-new.php opens the creation form directly.

⚠ The labels change. Depending on how old your site is and which theme is installed, the button is called Add New, Add New User or Add User. It is exactly the same screen, and the users.php address leads there in every case.

Fill in the form. 4 fields really matter, the rest can stay empty.

• Username, simply put metabacklinks. It cannot be changed afterwards, so keep it short.
• Email, enter contact@metabacklinks.com. One address can only serve 1 account on your site, and this one is reserved for us.
• Password, leave the one WordPress suggests. It is long and strong, exactly what we want. Copy it before you confirm.
• Role, right at the bottom of the form, choose Administrator. This is the field people forget most often, it sits below the password.

The Send the new user an email about their account box can stay ticked, it tells us the access exists.

Finally click Add New User.

For the curious, the technical shortcut. If your host gives you access to a console, the same thing fits on 1 line.

# Create the agency account, with the administrator role.
wp user create metabacklinks contact@metabacklinks.com --role=administrator

# Then check who holds the keys to the site.
wp user list --role=administrator --fields=ID,user_login,user_email

WordPress offers 5 roles. Think of them as a set of keys to a building, each one opens more or fewer doors.

• Administrator, the master key. Writes, publishes, installs, updates, sets security and manages the other accounts. This is the role your agents need.
• Editor, the key to the offices. Writes and publishes all the content, including other people's, but touches neither the plugins nor the settings.
• Author, the key to their own office. Publishes their own posts, and nothing else.
• Contributor, writes but does not publish. Somebody has to approve their work.
• Subscriber, gets into the lobby. Reads, comments, that is all.

Our recommendation, the Administrator role. Security updates, backups, loading speed and search settings all live behind that key. With the Editor role we could write your articles, but not protect your site or fix a technical problem.

If you would rather ease into it, take the Editor role for the first month. You will move the account to Administrator later, in 2 clicks, from the user list.

Go back to the user list, with your-company.co.uk/wp-admin/users.php.

You should see at least 2 lines there, yours and ours.

• The name metabacklinks appears.
• The Role column does say Administrator.

If the role shown is not the right one, hover over the line, click Edit, and correct the Role field. It can be changed as often as you like.

All that is left is to send us 2 pieces of information, the login address and the password.

Not in plain text in an email, nor in a message. Those channels keep a copy that nobody controls any more. A single use link, which erases itself as soon as it has been read, does the job nicely. We provide one if you would like it.

What we need from you, in 2 lines.

Login address.  your-company.co.uk/wp-admin
Username.       metabacklinks
Password.       the one WordPress generated

You keep full control. Whenever you feel like it, you open the user list, hover over our line and click Delete. Access is cut within the second, without touching yours, and your site carries on running exactly the same.