The Power of WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities–Portland WordPress Meetup

At tonight’s Portland WordPress meetup, I’ll present a combined version of my two talks on WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities system. I’ve given these talks before, most recently at WordCamp Toronto 2012 and WordCamp Toronto Developers 2012.

So those in attendance can follow along, below are the slides I’ll use as part of the discussion:

My appearance at PDXWP was described as follows:

WordPress’ roles seem simple enough on the surface, but behind the Administrator, Editor, and the other default roles is a powerful system that can be customized extensively. For April’s PDXWP Developer’s meetup, Erick Hitter, Lead of Team Custom at Automattic, is joining us to talk about WordPress roles and capabilities.

While some have said that other CMS’ have an advantage when it comes to security and customizing capabilities, Erick will demonstrate that that isn’t true. Starting with a walkthrough of how to modify existing roles and create new ones, he will then cover how to leverage custom roles in WordPress code. Finally, he will wrap up with a discussion of some powerful filters that will prove WordPress has a roles and capabilities system that is as flexible as the popular competitors often touted as having superior implementations.

Lastly, here’s the recording:

The Power of WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities: Understanding map_meta_cap–WordCamp Toronto Developers 2012

Today I delivered a followup talk to The Power of WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities that delves into the map_meta_cap filter. This presentation is intended for developers who need greater control over permissions than roles alone provide.

Here’s the abstract:

In the second installment of this talk, I’ll discuss the true power behind WordPress’ roles and capabilities system, map_meta_cap. Starting with an overview of how it relates to the system as a whole, including the functions discussed in the first installment, this talk will then use real-world examples to demonstrate how the map_meta_cap function and filter can be properly used to fully leverage WordPress’ capabilities system. For anyone who’s ever needed to conditionally grant or deny a user or group of users a certain ability, or wondered what the map_meta_cap flag in register_post_type() does, this talk will provide the answers.

Slides are available here.

The Power of WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities–WordCamp Toronto 2012

Today, I presented an expanded version of my latest talk, The Power of WordPress’ Roles and Capabilities, at WordCamp Toronto 2012. I first gave this talk last month at WordCamp Chicago, but today’s version included additional information for users just starting out with WordPress.

Abstract for my talk:

WordPress’ roles seem simple enough on the surface, but behind the Administrator, Editor, and the other default roles is a powerful system that can be customized extensively. While some have said that other CMS’ have an advantage when it comes to security and customizing capabilities, I’ll demonstrate in this talk that that isn’t true.

Starting with a walkthrough of how to modify existing roles and create new ones, I’ll then cover how to leverage custom roles in your code. I’ll wrap up with a discussion of some powerful filters that will prove WordPress has as flexible and able a roles and capabilities system as the popular competitors often touted as having superior implementations.

Slides are available at http://slides.ethitter.com/wcto-roles-and-capabilities/.