Roles and permissions

Every account on your marketplace has a role. The role decides which parts of the admin panel that person can open. Roles let you hand work to other people, such as approving listings or translating the site, without giving them the keys to your payments, settings and members.

The four built-in roles

Role	Who it’s for	What it can do
user	Every member who signs up	Their own account only: profile, listings, messages, favourites, orders and wallet. No admin panel.
translator	Someone who translates your site	Everything a user can do, plus Settings › Translations.
moderator	Someone who looks after listings and content	Everything a user can do, plus Listings (All listings and Moderation), Categories, Locations, Blog, Design › Menu and Settings › Translations.
admin	You and anyone you fully trust	Everything.

New members always get the user role. Only an administrator can change it.

Moderators and translators can see the admin panel sidebar, but a link outside their permissions tells them they don’t have access. Members with the user role who open the admin panel are sent to their own account pages.

Give someone a role

1. Go to Users and find the person (they need an account first; ask them to sign up or click Add user).
2. Click Edit.
3. Choose the new Role and click Submit.

The new permissions apply the next time the person signs in. If they’re already signed in, ask them to sign out and back in.

Create a custom role

When none of the built-in roles fits, for example a “support” person who may only see orders, create your own.

1. Go to Users and click Roles.
2. Click New, enter a Name and a Description, and click Submit.
3. In the list of roles, click Edit next to your new role.
4. Tick the areas this role may use (see below) and click Update.
5. Give the role to the right people as described above.

You can also change what the user, translator and moderator roles may do in the same way. The admin role can’t be changed: it always has full access.

How the permission list works

The edit page shows one box per part of the admin panel, named after its internal name. Each box has:

• a name.* checkbox, which grants everything in that part (for example ad.* grants all listing management),
• one checkbox per action, for finer control (for example only index to look but not edit).

In most cases tick the .* box. Some of the names you’ll use most:

Permission	Part of the admin panel
ad.*	All listings and Moderation
category.*, location.*, fields.*	Categories, Locations, Custom Fields
user.*	Users
order.*	Orders
pages.*, blog.*, faqs.*	Pages, Blog, FAQ
menu.*, widget.*, theme.*	Design › Menu, Widgets, Themes and Custom CSS
translations.*	Settings › Translations
stats.*	Analytics
profile.*, myads.*, mylistings.*, messages.*	The member’s own account pages. Keep these ticked on every role.

Settings pages, add-ons and integrations appear under their own short names (for example general, payment, blacklist, recaptcha). Think twice before granting them: they control how your whole site works.

Custom roles can’t be deleted once created. If you no longer need one, move its members to another role and untick all its permissions except the member account pages.

Good practice

• Give each helper their own account. Never share your administrator login.
• Start with the smallest set of permissions and add more when they need it.
• Have at least two administrator accounts (for example yours and a second address you control), so one mistake can’t lock you out.
• Moderators can’t be marked as spam or caught by the Black list, so check who you promote.

Related guides

• Manage users — find, edit and change the status of accounts.
• Moderation — the work moderators usually do.
• Language and translations — the page translators use.
• Locked out of the admin panel — what to do if you lose admin access.