How to Set Up Users & Roles in The Hub for Your Team Members and Clients

September 18, 2020

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With The Hub, you can give unlimited users multiple roles on any WordPress site you manage — even if they aren’t WPMU DEV members! Learn how to easily set all this up in minutes and give team members and clients as much or as little access as you’d like.

Plus, With The Hub Client, you can create your own fully branded Hub for your team members, clients, and collaborators … all in just a few clicks!

Oh, and did we mention it’s all free for your users and you’re able to be set up in minutes?

In this article, we’ll be going over how to:

Set Up Team Members
Set Up User Roles
Add User Customization Settings
Gain Quick Access to Sites
Set Up The Hub Client (THC)
Set Up Client Roles

This post’s features are accomplished from the Team tab in The Hub dashboard, except for The Hub Client, accessed by the Hub Client Plugin (which we’ll show you how to activate).

1. Set Up Team Members

The Hub allows you to collaborate with other users by assigning them roles and granting them access to specific areas of your WordPress site(s).

Creating new users in The Hub is the easiest way to allow access to users, all from one place.

From The Hub, click on Team…

Click on Team to get started.

Before inviting people to join your team, make sure that your details are correct, as these will appear on the invitation emails that your new team members will receive and your client portal.

To check, click on the Settings tab. If you haven’t already set this up, enter your name, upload your logo, and click Save to update your settings.

Team Settings screens. — Add your name and logo before inviting team members.

Once this initial step is done, go to Team Members and click the Add First Team Member button to get started.

The Hub - Team screen with no members added yet. — Click the button to add your first team member.

This brings up the Invite new member form, where you’ll be able to fill in the following details:

Enter their email address and name.
Select all the sites listed on your Hub that you want to give your new user access to. These settings can be changed at any time.

Scroll to select a site or use the dropdown menu and quick-search feature

Select a user role (View & Edit, View Only, or a Custom role). This can also be changed at any time.
Add notes about the user (optional).
Select an add-on service for the user (e.g. access to Support). This is optional too.

After filling in the details, click on Invite.

The Hub - Invite New Member screen. — Fill in the details and click on Invite to add your new team.

This will send out a confirmation email to the new user.

The Hub - New team member confirmation email. — Your new team members will receive an email invitation to join your team.

Once the user gets the email and hits Confirm, they will be redirected to WPMU DEV to set up a free account with their email, name, and password.

Create a Free Account at WPMU DEV — Your new team members only need to complete this simple setup and click Join to have access to sites.

New team members don’t need to be members of WPMU DEV, and there’s no cost involved.

When they click Join, they will be added to your Team Hub account, where they will only have access to the sites and roles granted by the admin.

The Hub Team account screen. — New team members can only access what they have been given roles and permissions to do by the WPMU DEV member.

As the WPMU DEV member and Hub administrator, you can see the new user in the Team Members area.

If the user hasn’t confirmed yet, their account will show as Pending.

The Hub - Team - New user- Pending status. — This member hasn’t confirmed yet.

Once the member accepts the invite and creates their free account, their status will become active.

The Hub - New active user. — This team member is now active.

From the Team Members section, you can quickly and easily add as many users as you need by clicking on the New Team Member button and view the names, emails, roles, addons, and sites that your team members have access to, as well as managing and removing them from your account.

2. Set Up User Roles

Roles give your team members’ access capabilities to one or more sites in your Hub.

With almost two dozen configurable modules, The Hub allows you to provide your team members with access to all areas of your site(s) and/or customize roles to access only specific areas and module settings.

A list of all configurable Hub modules in the Custom Roles screen. — Use Custom roles to configure access to different Hub modules of your site(s) for team members.

When you create a new team member profile (see previous step), you can set the following roles:

View and Edit – All: Team members can view and edit the settings in this area. Note: This is a system role and cannot be modified (only custom roles can be modified).
View Only – All: Team members can view the data and settings in this area but cannot modify them. This limitation only applies to the area associated with the current toggle. This is another system role that cannot be modified.
Custom: Team members have access to an area but are limited to certain tasks or actions within that area.

To create a custom role, click on the Roles tab and then click on + Create New Role.

The Hub - Roles - New Custom Role — Let’s create a new custom role.

You can give the new role a unique name and customize it by configuring any of the available permissions and settings however you like.

Let’s take a closer look at how to customize a role.

3. Add User Customization Settings

Customizing access for a role can be determined by clicking on all the available options (e.g. sites, security settings, SEO, etc). Also, choose to have View & Edit or View Only for sites.

Create a custom role by enabling or hiding various Hub modules.

The Custom option lets you configure specific module settings and provides detailed task descriptions about each option.

For example, if you give a team member custom access to the Plugins module, you can allow them to View & Edit all settings in that module, View only, or select which settings you’d like them to have the capability to manage by clicking Custom.

The Hub - Roles - Custom Roles - Configuration Options. — Custom roles give you further options to configure enabled modules.

If you select Custom, a new screen will open giving you further customization options for the module.

Custom Roles - Plugins screen. — You can create a custom role that allows team members to activate or uninstall plugins, and more.

After specifying the options and settings your team members can access for all of the various available modules, click Save to update your custom role settings.

Team members assigned that specific custom role will now see only the modules, options, and settings made available for that role. Everything else will be hidden from view.

You can view all the roles you have assigned to team members under the Role column in the Team Members screen.

The Hub - Team - Team Members — The Team Members screen lists all the members you have added to your team and their assigned roles.

To customize which sites team members have access to or to change their roles, simply click on the team member, edit their settings, and resave.

Easily reassign the user roles and sites your team members can access.

For more information about creating custom roles, refer to our documentation.

4. Gain Quick Access to Sites

Click on the Sites tab to quickly and easily view which team members have access to specific sites being managed in The Hub.

The Users column displays how many team members are assigned to each site.

The Hub - Team - Sites screen. — See how many team members can access each site in the Users column.

Clicking the number in the Users column displays the team members assigned to that site.

The Hub - Team - Sites screen - Users — View active and pending members assigned to a specific site by clicking on the number of users.

Click on the plus sign by the site’s name to add or remove a user from that site.

The Hub - Team - Sites - Add/Remove user — Click the plus site to add or remove user access for specific team members.

You can check who has access and whether they’re active or not, uncheck the user to remove their access from the site, invite a new user, or resend an invitation to a pending user.