Users and permissions

A SeedWebs site can have many users. Each one is given a single role, and that role decides which menus they see in the admin panel, what they can edit, and whether they can publish.

Users are managed at Settings → Users (/admin/settings/users), which is open to Super Admin and Admin only. Other roles do not see Users in the Settings menu, and typing the URL directly gives “Not available for your role”.

The four roles

There are four: Super Admin, Admin, Editor, Writer. (With the admin panel in Thai they appear as ผู้ดูแลสูงสุด, ผู้ดูแล, ผู้แก้ไข, ผู้เขียน.)

Role	Who it is for
Super Admin	The site owner. Everything, including resetting the site and restoring backups
Admin	A trusted manager. Almost everything, except reset/restore and granting Super Admin
Editor	Runs the content. Edits and publishes anyone’s work, but cannot touch site settings
Writer	Writes for review. Sees and edits only their own work, and cannot publish it

The site owner’s email — whoever ordered the site — is made Super Admin automatically at creation.

The permission table

This table comes from the rules the platform actually enforces. The admin panel hides buttons by role, and the API checks again on every request, so bypassing the screen and calling the API directly is refused just the same.

Task	Super Admin	Admin	Editor	Writer
Dashboard	✓	✓	✓	✓
See content lists	All	All	All	Own only
Create content	✓	✓	✓	✓ (saved as Draft)
Edit somebody else’s content	✓	✓	✓	–
Publish	✓	✓	✓	–
Move content to Trash	✓	✓	✓	Own unpublished work only
Delete permanently from Trash	✓	✓	–	–
Bulk actions on several items	✓	✓	–	–
Create a translation	✓	✓	✓	–
Media: upload / edit / move to trash	✓	✓	✓	✓
Media: restore from trash	✓	✓	✓	–
Media: delete permanently / Empty Trash	✓	✓	–	–
Authors, Staffs, Members (create/edit)	✓	✓	✓	–
Authors, Staffs, Members (delete)	✓	✓	–	–
Forms (create/edit/delete)	✓	✓	–	–
Tour bookings: view and change status	✓	✓	✓	–
Tour bookings: refund through the gateway	✓	✓	–	–
Settings → General, Code, Themes, Menus, Banners, Cookies, Chat Buttons, Marketing	✓	✓	–	–
Settings → Payments	✓	✓	Can open, cannot save	–
Settings → Users	✓	✓	–	–
SEO (/admin/seo)	✓	✓	–	–
Tools → Redirects, Import, Demos, API Tokens, Connected Apps, Backup	✓	✓	–	–
Tools → Backup: restore from a snapshot	✓	–	–	–
Tools → Reset (wipe the site’s content)	✓	–	–	–
Logs → Activity, Email, Conversations	✓	✓	–	–

The table says which role may do something. Whether a row exists on your site at all also depends on your plan and on feature flags: Staffs, Members and Tours (including the bookings screen) need the team to enable experimental features first, Members additionally needs the Business plan (or the trial), and Tours comes with no plan automatically. See Admin panel overview.

Things that catch people out:

• An Editor sees exactly one Settings item — Payments — because that permission belongs to taking tour bookings. Every other Settings item is hidden. Saving settings still needs Admin or above, so an Editor can look but not change.
• A Writer sees no Settings, Tools or Logs at all, having no permission anywhere in those groups.
• Under Logs, Conversations appears once the site has an AI API key and the AI chat is switched on. Until then an Admin sees only Activity and Email.
• Tour bookings are permissioned separately from tour content on purpose: a Writer who writes the tour pages does not see a customer’s name, email or phone number.
• Bulk actions work for Super Admin and Admin only. An Editor still sees the bar, but using it returns “Insufficient permissions”. A Writer never sees it.

A Writer’s “own only” restriction applies to Posts, Pages, Docs, Events, Products, Sliders, Books and Tours. It is matched on the email recorded when the item was created.

What a Writer can and cannot do

The Writer role follows WordPress’s Contributor model: write, submit for review, but never put it on the site yourself. What to know before handing the role out:

They see only their own work

A list like Posts is filtered to items that Writer created. Other people’s work is not in the list, and opening its URL directly reports not found (Post not found) rather than saying it is forbidden. Trying to edit or delete somebody else’s item by another route returns You can only modify items you created.

They cannot publish, and a publish request becomes a Draft

In the editor the status buttons offer Draft only, because Published is hidden from roles without publish permission.

More importantly, the server checks again. A save request arriving from a Writer account with status Published is downgraded to Draft and saved normally, with no warning that it was downgraded. The screen says saved successfully, and the item is still a Draft. If a Writer reports “I saved it but it is not on the site”, this is the first thing to check.

The statuses a Writer can actually set are Draft and Trash.

Once published, they cannot edit it again

After an Editor or Admin publishes the item, the Writer who wrote it can no longer save over it. The reply is:

This post has already been published — ask an editor to revert it to draft first.

They can still read it. To edit, an Editor has to set it back to Draft.

The byline is locked to them

In the Post form, a Writer’s Author field is set to the Author linked to their account and cannot be changed, and the Co-authors section is not shown. A request from a Writer account that tries to change author_id or add co-authors has those values ignored; the rest of the save goes through.

If the account has no Author linked yet, creating a Post fails with a message saying an administrator has to create one first.

What a Writer can still do

• Upload and edit files in Media, including moving files to the trash (but not restoring or deleting permanently)
• Edit their own profile at /admin/profile (name, phone) and add their own passkeys
• Move their own unpublished work to the trash, with the trash button in the editor

Users and Authors are linked by email

Every new user gets an Author row created automatically, matched 1:1 by email. The reason is that the byline shown on your public site comes from the Authors table, not directly from the user account.

• These automatic Authors appear under Authors (/admin/authors) and are always created in the en locale. For a Thai name, add a translation there.
• Editing an Author’s Display Name changes the byline readers see. Editing the name under Users changes the admin account’s own details.
• If an Author was somehow missing at first sign-in, it is created when the account loads. Nothing for you to do.
• An Author with no email is an Author for somebody who does not use the admin panel — a guest writer. That is allowed.

Email cannot change after the account is created

On Edit User the Email field is disabled, with the note “Email is the account’s identity and can’t be changed. A user migration feature is planned for a future release.” Sending a new email through the API is silently dropped rather than applied.

Email is both the identity used at sign-in and the key linking the account to its Author. When somebody on the team changes email, the supported route today is to create a new user with the new email and delete the old account. Their content stays, but the “own only” restriction is tied to the old email — so if that person is a Writer, they will no longer see their earlier work.

Adding somebody to your site

You need Super Admin or Admin.

1. Go to Settings → Users (/admin/settings/users).
2. Press Add User.
3. Fill in First Name, Last Name, Email (required) and Phone.
4. Choose a Role. The default is Writer.
5. Press Add User to save.

Worth knowing:

• No invitation email is sent. Adding a user grants that email access, nothing more. Tell them yourself to go to /admin/ and sign in with that email.
• The email has to match the one they sign in with. For Google, it must be that Google account’s address.
• Duplicate emails are refused: “A user with this email already exists.”
• An Admin cannot make anyone Super Admin. The option is not in the list, and a request through the API is refused with “Only a super admin can grant the super admin role.”
• No plan limits the number of users. See Plans and billing for what plans do limit.

Ways to sign in

The sign-in page is at {site}.seedwebs.app/admin/, with three options.

Method	How it works
Sign in with Google	Press the button and pick the Google account whose email an administrator added
Email	Enter your email and SeedWebs sends a 6-digit code. Codes expire after 10 minutes
Passkey	Enter your email and confirm with Face ID / fingerprint / device PIN. A passkey has to be added first, from /admin/profile

Common situations:

• An email not yet on the Users page gets “You are not authorized. Contact your admin.” from Google sign-in.
• Requesting an email code for an address that is not on this site moves on to the code field as usual, but no email is actually sent. That is deliberate, so an outsider cannot probe for administrator addresses.
• Email codes are limited to 3 requests per hour per address, and 5 wrong attempts before you have to request a new one.
• A session lasts about 2 hours. After that, sign in again.
• You can add several passkeys per account (a phone and a laptop, say), managed under Passkeys at /admin/profile.

Changing roles and removing users

At Settings → Users, press Edit on their row (/admin/settings/users/{id}). Only First Name, Last Name, Phone and Role can be changed.

• Granting Super Admin can be done only by somebody who is already Super Admin.
• Editing or deleting another Super Admin is for Super Admins only. An Admin is refused with “Only a super admin can modify a super admin user.” (or “Only a super admin can delete a super admin user.” when deleting).
• The last Super Admin is locked. With only one active Super Admin left, the Role field is disabled, Delete disappears, and a note asks you to promote somebody else first. This is what stops a site locking itself out of its own admin panel.
• Deleting a user cannot be undone. You are asked to confirm once. Deleting removes their access; their content stays, and so does their Author row, so bylines on the public site do not disappear.

Related

• Who did what — Logs → Activity (/admin/logs/activity) records the email and name behind every create, edit and delete. Admin and above.
• Tools → Reset (/admin/tools/reset, Super Admin only) wipes the site’s content and deletes every user who is not a Super Admin. You have to add people back afterwards.
• SeedWebs team accounts configured at the platform level can enter a site’s admin panel as Super Admin to help with a problem. Such an account may show up in the Users list after its first sign-in.
• A page blocked by your plan, or not enabled, says “is not included in your plan” or “is not enabled” — which is a different thing from roles. If you are Super Admin and still cannot get in, check the plan and feature flags rather than permissions. (The permission message is “Not available for your role”.)
• The whole sidebar is mapped in Admin panel overview, and working with content in Pages and posts.