How to Remove Unwanted WordPress User Roles

By default, WordPress arrives with five default user roles: Contributor, Subscriber, Author, Editor, and Administrator.

However, when you start installing plugins, you may see many extra roles.

For example, if you install Yoast SEO, there will be two new roles: “SEO Editor” and “SEO Manager”. If you then add WooCommerce, you’ll find two more roles: “Shop manager” and “Customer”. The more plugins you add, the longer this list will become:

Is it possible to delete these extra roles, if you don’t want to use them? Yes, you can delete user roles with the PublishPress Capabilities plugin.

First, install the c plugin into your site.

In your WordPress admin menu, go to “Capabilities”. In the top-right corner of this screen, look for the “Select Role to View / Edit” dropdown.

Choose the role you want to delete. In the image above, I want to delete “SEO Editor”. Click “Load”.

Scroll to the bottom the screen and click “Delete role”. You can see this link in the image below:

Next, you’ll see a confirmation pop-up box. Click “OK” to delete the role:

FInally, you’ll see a message saying that the deletion was successful. Any users in the “SEO Editor” role will be moved to the “Subscriber” role.

“Subscriber” is a very basic role with the fewest permissions of all the default WordPress user roles.