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Function Reference/remove cap

Description

Removes a capability from a role or specific user. Changing the capabilities of a role or user is persistent, meaning the removed capability will stay in effect until explicitly granted.

N.B.: This setting is saved to the database (in table wp_options, field wp_user_roles), so it might be better to run this only once, probably on theme/plugin activation or deactivation

Usage

<?php global $wp_roles; // global class wp-includes/capabilities.php $wp_roles->remove_cap( $role, $cap ); ?> or <?php $role = get_role( 'author' ); $role->remove_cap( $cap ); ?>

Parameters

role

(string) (Required) role name

Default: None

cap

(string) (Required) capability name

Default: None

Example

add_action( 'admin_init', 'remove_editor_read_private_posts' );

function remove_editor_read_private_posts(){
  $role = get_role( 'editor' );
  $role->remove_cap( 'read_private_posts' );

 
}

 // or you can simply use (when deactivating your plugin): 

function remove_editor_read_private_posts(){
   global $wp_roles;
       $wp_roles->remove_cap( 'editor', 'read_private_posts' );
}

NB: This setting is saved to the database (in table wp_options, field wp_user_roles), so it might be better to this run only once, probably on theme/plugin activation or deactivation

// to add remove capability from specific user
$user = new WP_User( $user_id );
$user->remove_cap( 'read_private_posts' );

Remove multiple capabilities

// Remove capabilities from editor
// Only run this code once since it changes the values in the db!
function set_capabilities() {

    // get the the role object
    $editor = get_role('editor');

    $caps = array(
        'moderate_comments',
        'manage_categories',
        'manage_links',
        'edit_others_posts',
        'edit_others_pages',
        'delete_posts'
    );

    foreach ( $caps as $cap ){
        // remove $cap capability for this role object
        $editor->remove_cap( $cap );
    }
}
add_action('init', 'set_capabilities');

Notes

One note: I used remove_cap( 'administrator', 'manage_categories' ); to remove the +Add New Category link from the Posts page and it resulted in a Fatal error: Call to undefined function remove_cap() error. If this happens use the first option in the example above. That works well. This happened to me in Wordpress version 3.4.2.

Version 3.5.x and 3.6

remove_cap are functions from classes WP_Roles, WP_Role and WP_User... so cannot be called alone...

Changelog

Since: 2.0.0

Source File

remove_cap() is located in wp-includes/capabilities.php.

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