How to use the Divi user role editor

Even though Divi is very user-friendly and easy to use, we can’t deny that it comes with a learning curve. And so, if an untrained client gets their hands on your Divi website, they can break the entire design. The Divi User Role Editor allows you to limit what specific users can and cannot do in the Divi Builder and makes it easy to use Divi for clients.

This article will give you a deep dive into how the Divi Role Editor works. But first, let’s quickly go over the fundamentals – what it is and why you should use it.

What is the Divi user role editor & What does it do?

The Divi Theme and the Divi Builder plugin feature a backend option called the “Role Editor.” It allows you to specify which “user roles” on your website get access to which Divi features.

To access it, you will need to login to your WordPress backend dashboard, and then from the left-hand sidebar, navigate to Divi > Role Editor.

Divi Role Editor

As you can see from the image, there’s a top panel from where you can select the “User Role” that you wish to edit. Next, there’s a long list of toggles, conveniently categorized and covering almost all the Divi features and functionalities.

Through this, you get granular control over which Divi features that specific user gets to use and which of them are off-limits. This includes everything from basic features like access to the Divi Library and Settings to completely blocking off the various Divi modules.

In the following section, we will be taking a more comprehensive look at the various Divi Role Editor options. After that, we will go over a quick tutorial on how to use them.

So without further ado, let’s get started:

Understanding the different Divi user role editor options

All the various Divi options, settings, and features are neatly categorized inside the Role Editor. Let’s take a quick look at all of them and the different features/options it contains.

Menu Options

Menu Options

Here you have access to the main Divi Menu Items. From here, you can disable/enable access to features like:

• Theme Options
• Divi Library
• Theme Builder
• Split Testing
• Theme Customizer
• Page Options
• Portability

Builder Interface

Builder Interface

From here, you get to control which features in the Divi builder the user role has access to. The options included are:

• Add/Delete Item
• Edit Item
• Move Item
• Disable Item
• Lock Item
• Toggle Divi Builder
• Load Layout
• Use Visual Builder
• Upload/Remove Fonts
• Dynamic Content Custom Fields

Library Settings

Library Settings

The Library Settings section lets you decide how the user role interacts with the Divi Library.

• Save To Library
• Add From Library
• Edit Global Items

Settings Tabs

Settings Tabs

When using the Divi builder, you should know that the row, section, and module sections contain three settings: Content, Design, and Advanced. These are the general settings.

Under this section, you get to control which of these settings the user role will access.

• Content Settings
• Design Settings
• Advanced Settings

Settings Types

Settings Types

In the above section, we could disable/enable the general settings common to the Divi modules, sections, and rows. But what if you don’t want to remove/approve access to those settings completely? Instead, you want more granular control over the settings under each of the general settings.
In that case, you can enable/disable access to those settings types from here.

• Edit Colors
• Edit Content
• Edit Fonts
• Edit Buttons
• Edit Layout
• Edit Borders
• Edit Configuration

Module Use

Module Use

As you know, the Divi Builder comes with close to 50 design modules that you can drag and drop into your pages to design your website. Under this section, you get to decide which of these Divi modules will be accessible to the user role.

Support Center

Support Center

The Divi Support Center is a handy feature provided with the Divi theme. The Support Center is available as a dedicated section in your WordPress backend from where you can access the system status, enable/disable remote access for the Elegant Themes support team, access debug logs and helpful videos & documentations on the Divi theme.

From this section, you get to choose which of these support features are accessible to the user role.

• Divi Support Center Page
• System Status
• Remote Access
• Divi Documentation & Help
• Safe Mode
• Logs

Portability

Portability

Under the Portability section, you get to control which features and options the user role gets to import or export from your website.

• Divi Customizer Settings
• Divi Theme Options
• Divi Role Editor Settings
• Divi Builder Layouts
• Divi Builder Layout
• Divi Theme Builder

How to use Divi user role editor to manage user access?

By now, you should have a good enough understanding of what the Divi Role Editor is and the different features it brings to the table. So with that out of the way, here’s a quick step-by-step tutorial showing you how to use this feature to specify the limits and permissions for a user role.

Step 1: Select the user role

By default, a WordPress installation will give you access to 5 user roles – Administrator, Editor, Author, Subscriber, and Contributor. Out of these 5, the Divi Role Editor recognizes the first 4, disregarding the Subscriber. So, if a user is assigned the Subscriber user role, they won’t have access to any Divi features.

With that being said, you can always add more custom user roles by installing dedicated plugins. And the additional roles will appear in the Divi Role Editor from where you can manage their permissions.

However, for this review, we will be sticking to the default user roles.

Now, to pick a user role for assigning Divi features, log in to your WordPress backend dashboard and go to Divi > User Role from the left-hand sidebar. Next, you will get to see all available user roles on your website on the top panel.

Pick the one you wish to edit by clicking on it.

The page will update with all the options available for that specific user role.

Divi Role Editor – User Roles

As you can see, many user roles don’t even have the options provided for you to disable/enable them. For example, the Editor user role doesn’t have access to the “Divi Library” menu option, and it can’t even be enabled. However, by default, the “Theme Builder” is also inaccessible to the Editor, but you can enable it through the Role Editor.

After selecting the user role you want to assign special permissions to, it’s time to move on to the actual permission assigning phase.

Step 2: Enabling/disabling Divi features for a user role

For the sake of this tutorial, let’s imagine that you are a web designer who just created a new WordPress website for your clients.

The client isn’t too tech-savvy and might accidentally break the website’s design by interacting with the Divi visual builder. But at the same time, the client wants to use the Divi builder to write blog posts on the site because seeing the results in real-time is useful.

Furthermore, the client will use the website as the “Administrator,” and we can’t assign them a less powerful user role. So we will be limiting the Divi access for the “Administrator” user role.

But what features do we limit? Let’s go over them section by section.

• Menu Options – All options can stay enabled here.
• Builder Interface – Almost all necessary options are present here for the client to write blog posts. But access to these options can also accidentally mess up your site’s design. As such, you can lock the various modules and sections on your design and then disable the “Lock Item” setting for the Admin role.
• Library Settings – Since they are creating blog posts, there’s no need to give them the power to “Edit Global Items.” So this can be disabled.
• Settings Tabs – All options can stay enabled and might be necessary.
• Settings Types – All options can stay enabled and might be necessary.
• Module Use – The main modules the client will likely use are Blog, Call To Action, Code, Divider, Gallery, Image, Map, Post Content, Sliders, Video, and Video Sliders. Apart from these, other modules can be disabled. However, it’s wise to discuss with the client beforehand what modules they intend to use.
• Support Center – A client might accidentally enable “Safe Mode” and get confused as to why most plugins, child themes, and custom codes stopped working. To avoid this, disable “Safe Mode.” Other features are helpful and won’t cause any serious problems.
• Portability – The entire portability section won’t be useful if the person isn’t a web developer/webmaster managing multiple Divi websites. As such, the entire section can be disabled. To disable an entire section, click on the four-square dot beside the section.

Divi Role Editor – Disable Entire Section

And that’s it! You have successfully modified the Divi user role permissions so that your clients can safely use your website, and you don’t have to worry about any accidental mess-ups.

Wrapping Up

So this was our quick overview on how to use the Divi user role editor. As you can see, it’s super easy to use and gives you granular control over all the Divi features, settings, and options.

For this Divi tutorial, we picked a hypothetical scenario where the client isn’t tech-savvy and wants just enough Divi features to write blog posts freely. However, depending on your situation, you will need to get a bit creative on which features to disable and which ones to keep enabled.

Also, sometimes you would want to disable features out for pure security reasons. Maybe you don’t want the people under a user role access to your Divi Library. So even if they can break your site’s design from there, just disabling access to the Divi Library and Portability options will give you the much-needed peace of mind.