View Admin As Plugin

The ultimate User switcher and Role manager

This plugin will add a menu item to your admin bar where you can change your view in the WordPress admin.
Switch to other users without the need to login as that user or even switch roles and temporarily change your own capabilities.

When you’re viewing as a different user, you can also change this user’s preferences; like screen settings on various admin pages.

With the “Role defaults” module you can set default screen settings and metabox locations for roles and apply them to users through various bulk actions.

It also features a “Role manager” module to add, edit or remove roles and grant or deny them capabilities.

Overview / Features

• Switch between user accounts
  • Edit this user’s screen preferences and settings
• Switch between roles
• Temporarily change your own capabilities (non-destructively)
• View your site as an unregistered visitor
• Switch language/locale on backend and frontend
• Make combinations of the above view types
• Easily switch back anytime
• Completely secure (see Security below)
• Do all the above without logging out!

Module: Role defaults (screen settings)

• Set default screen settings for roles
• Apply defaults to a user
• Apply defaults to all users of a role
• Apply defaults when registering a new user (in a multisite this is done when a user is added to its first blog)
• Copy defaults from one role to another (or multiple)
• Import/Export role defaults, can also download (and upload) setting files
• Disable the “screen settings” option and/or lock the meta boxes for all users that don’t have access to this plugin

Click here for Role Defaults documentation

Module: Role manager (role editor)

Note: Changes made with the Role Manager are permanent!

• Add, edit or delete roles
• Grant and/or add capabilities to roles
• Rename roles
• Clone roles
• Import/Export roles, can also download (and upload) setting files
• Update role capabilities from current view
• Automatically migrate users to another role after deleting a role

Click here for Role Manager documentation

Compatibility & Integrations

This plugin will work with most other plugins but these are tested:

• Advanced Access Manager(Pro version not verified)
• bbPress
• BuddyPress
• Genesis Framework(and probably other theme frameworks)
• Google Site Kit
• Gravity Forms
• Groups 2.1+(Custom integration: adds a view type for groups. Pro version not tested)
• Pods Framework 2.0+
• Members
• Restrict User Access 0.13+(Custom integration: adds a view type for access levels)
• User Roles and Capabilities
• User Role Editor(Pro version not verified)
• User Switching(Not sure why you’d want this but yes, switch-ception is possible!)
• WPFront User Role Editor
• WP Admin UI Customize 1.5.11+
• Yoast SEO

Full list of tested plugins and details: Compatibility & Integrations

I can’t switch back!

See item 3 at FAQ.

It’s not working! / I found a bug!

Please let me know through the support and add a plugins and themes list! 🙂

Security

This plugin is completely safe and will keep your users, passwords and data secure.
For more info see item 7 at FAQ!

Developer notes

This plugin will only be useful for admins (network super admins or regular admins). It will not add functionalities for other roles unless you specifically apply custom capabilities for those users.
Also keep in mind that switching to users that have equal roles is disabled. (regular admins to regular admins + super admins to super admins)

I’ve created this at first for myself since I’m a developer and often need to see the outcome on roles which my clients use.

So, when you are developing a plugin or theme that does anything with roles or capabilities you can use this plugin to easily check if everything works.
No more hassle of creating test users and constantly logging out and in anymore!

This plugin is also useful to support your clients and/or users. For example; make screen display presets of the edit and overview pages before you let them log in.

You can find me here:

• Keraweb
• GitHub
• LinkedIn

Translations

Please help translating this plugin on translate.wordpress.org!

Actions & Filters

• Click here for Action documentation
• Click here for Filter documentation

Plugin capabilities

Click here for documentation

Ideas?

Please let me know on GitHub!

Installation of this plugin works like any other plugin out there. Either:

1. Upload and unpack the zip file to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Or search for “View Admin As” via your plugins menu.

Minimum Requirements

• WordPress 4.1 or greater (Though I always recommend to update to the latest version!)

Install as a must-use plugin

Move the view-admin-as.php file into the root of your mu-plugins directory, not in the view-admin-as subdirectory.
This is a limitation of WordPress and probably won’t change soon.

Example:
All files dir: /wp-content/mu-plugins/view-admin-as/...
Main file dir: /wp-content/mu-plugins/view-admin-as.php

1. 

   Default dropdown

2. 

   Dropdown with grouped users

3. 

   Search users

4. 

   Quickly (de)select capabilities

5. 

   Large popup for better overview of capabilities

6. 

   Admin bar when a view is selected + the reset button location

7. 

   Settings window

8. 

   Module Role defaults window (tabs are normally closed)

9. 

   Module Role manager main window (tabs are normally closed)

10. 

    Module Role manager capability window (tabs is normally closed)

11. 

    View combinations

12. 

    Access levels taken from the "Restrict User Access" plugin

1.8.9

• Fix: Event bubbling for select elements #130
• Fix: Check if removable query args exists before adding removal script on front-end

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.8

• Enhancement: RTL support. #122
• Enhancement: User context for checking the edit_user capability.
• Enhancement: Enhance front-end CSS by preventing theme overrides. #120
• Enhancement/Fix: JSON/REST call checks.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.7

• Enhancement: Added hooks vaa_view_admin_as_reset_all_views, vaa_view_admin_as_cleanup_views, vaa_view_admin_as_reset_view, vaa_view_admin_as_update_view.
• Enhancement/Compatibility: Fix compatibility issue with MetaSlider block preview (JSON/AJAX requests) #117
• Compatibility: Fixed issues with capability filters overwriting available capabilities.
• Compatibility: Remove redundant canonical tag. #119
• Compatibility: WordPress 5.7 UI.
• Fixed: Missing textdomain parameter.
• Refactor: Added action logs.
• Refactor: Enhance view type classes.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.6

• Compatibility: WordPress 5.4 apply_shortcodes() function. #111
• Compatibility: Add Google Site Kit capabilities. #110
• Compatibility: User Role Editor capability filter format. #112
• Enhancement: Always show force-ajax-users setting to optionally prevent query.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.5

• Compatibility: CSS compatibility for WP 5.3
• Compatibility: Roles are now translated in all cases since WP 5.2.
• Enhancement: JS performance.
• Enhancement: Enhance AJAX checks.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.4

• Enhancement: Role Manager: Reload when in a user view and the user’s role has been modified. #105
• Compatibility: WordPress 5.2 admin bar arrow icon update. WP Core #37513
• Compatibility:Dark Mode (Github)
• Fix: Role Defaults: Only return screen setting overwrite if found. #104
• API: Added API method is_view_active(). (Documentation)

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.3

• Compatibility: Users always have the exists capability. Go to issue
• Compatibility: WordPress 4.9.6 privacy capabilities.
• API: Added several API methods & enhancements.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.2

• Enhancement/Fix: Support AJAX search in the Role Defaults module. #100
• Enhancement: Add support for X-Redirect-By header since WordPress 5.0. #42313
• Enhancement: Improve uninstall script.
• Enhancement: Use latest WPCS v1.1 update and fix code standard notices.
• UI: Change the default top level node text to “View As” (same as Facebook uses).
• Updated: Screenshots

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8.1

• Feature: Support searching users by multiple user columns like email, url, etc. #95
• Feature: User setting to force AJAX search for users. #96
• Feature: New filter: view_admin_as_user_ajax_search to force AJAX search for user at all times.
• Fix: Prevent “form changed” popup which showed in various pages. #93
• Enhancement: Improve Pods Framework compatibility when in a view.
• Enhancement: Improve getting view data on load.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

1.8

• Feature: View combinations UI. #18
• Feature/Enhancement: Limit user query to max 100 users for performance. Switch to AJAX search if there are more users than this limit. #19
• Accessibility: New filter: view_admin_as_user_query_limit to change the limit used to query users.
• Accessibility: New filters: vaa_admin_bar_view_title_role & vaa_admin_bar_view_title_user & vaa_admin_bar_view_title_locale to change the titles for role, users and languages.
• Accessibility: New filter: vaa_admin_bar_view_title_user_show_roles to remove the roles from user nodes.
• Accessibility: New filter: view_admin_as_full_access_capabilities for single site installations to change the capabilities required to gain full access to this plugin.
• Enhancement: Use a class autoloader.
• Enhancement: Stop using the rel attribute for view type data.
• Enhancement: Access validation logic.
• Compatibility: Patch Yoast SEO compatibility. Yoast SEO #9365
• Refactoring: Action/Filter hook manager class. #77
• Refactoring: Refactor all view types as separate modules. #84
• Fix: Use prop instead of attr for checked attributes in checkbox inputs.
• Updated/Added: Screenshots.

Detailed info: PR on GitHub

Older versions

Complete changelog