User Roles

Ignition Crowdfunding adds a Campaign Backer role and extends the default Administrator role with campaign management capabilities. In a default install, staff author campaigns, and everyone who signs up is a backer.

Staff are administrators and operators — people who run the fundraising without an administrator login. See Administrators and Operators for what each can do and how to make someone an operator.

Campaign Backer

Property	Value
Role slug	`igcf_backer`
Auto-assigned	On registration through the auth form

Capabilities

Capability	Description
`read`	Read access (WordPress default)
`igcf_create_pledge`	Create pledges on active campaigns

Campaign Backers cannot create or edit campaigns, access wp-admin, or post campaign updates.

Guest users

When guest checkout is enabled, backers can pledge with just an email address. The system creates a guest WordPress user with the Campaign Backer role. Guest users have the same capabilities as regular backers, with additional restrictions:

Restriction	Reason
Cannot view pledge history in the dashboard	Prevents unauthorized access to another person’s pledges until the account is claimed
No password set	Guests claim the account via an activation link rather than a password reset — see Email Verification
Display name shown as “Guest”	Avoids exposing email addresses on the public backer list

Guest users appear with a Guest indicator in the WordPress admin Users list. Guest accounts that never complete a pledge are automatically removed after 24 hours. Once a guest claims their account, the Guest marker is removed and the user can log in normally — see Email Verification.

Administrator

Administrators receive the full set of campaign management capabilities on activation — creating, editing, publishing, and deleting any campaign, their own and others’ — plus:

Capability	Description
`edit_others_igcf_campaigns`	Edit and manage any user’s campaigns.
`publish_igcf_campaigns`	Publish campaigns.
`read_private_igcf_campaigns`	View draft and other non-public campaigns.
`igcf_create_pledge`	Create pledges on active campaigns.
`igcf_manage_all_pledges`	View and manage all pledges across the site.
`igcf_view_user_summaries`	View the Backers user-summary page and follow the user-summary links in the admin Pledges and Campaigns lists.

Three more Ignition permissions are given to administrators automatically each time WordPress checks a permission, rather than being stored on the Administrator role:

Capability	Who has it	Description
`igcf_staff`	Anyone who can manage the site’s options, and operators	Use the Ignition menu, the Dashboard widget and email previews, and receive staff emails.
`igcf_manage_settings`	Anyone who can manage the site’s options, and operators	Open Ignition > Settings and change the settings an operator may change.
`igcf_manage_campaign_terms`	Anyone who can manage categories, and operators	Add, edit and delete campaign categories and tags.

Administrators manage campaigns from both the frontend campaign form and the Ignition → Campaigns screen in wp-admin.

Operator

An operator is not a WordPress role: it is a tick box, Ignition operator, on the person’s user profile. It gives them the same campaign, pledge and backer permissions as an administrator, plus access to Ignition’s business settings, on top of whatever WordPress role they already hold. See Administrators and Operators.

Campaign Creator (add-on)

The campaign creator role — a non-admin, frontend-only persona for people who run their own campaigns without wp-admin access — is provided by the Ignition Platform Mode add-on, not by core. In a default install there is no creator role: campaigns are authored by staff, and self-service registrants become backers. Activate Platform Mode to open the site to outside creators.

How roles are created

Roles and capabilities are registered when the plugin is activated. If you deactivate and reactivate the plugin, roles are refreshed.