
Every time I work on a new WordPress website for a client I find myself logging in and out of the platform to test the accounts and roles I have created. This testing is important to see the back end from a clients perspective and not only as an administrator. Otherwise I will just get questions like… “where is the menu item you showed me for doing xyz?”… all the time.
I’m going to show you how I handle this quite effectively using a cool free plugin to do the user account switching for me. Read on and see how it works.
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1) Download and install the User Switching plugin for WordPress.
2) Once installed you will notice that you now have the “Switch to” option under users when hovering over the area below the name.

It is also available if you go to the edit user page as show below. Clicking this link will switch to the user and you will loose the admin role. This way you will easily see the site as a less powerful user.

3) You may be asking… yes cool but how do I get back to the admin role? As a subscriber I cannot see other users and switch back.
The plugin solved this issue by giving you the option to switch back as shown below… and no worries this option is NOT available unless you initially logged in as an administrator.




{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
A great plugin. I usually use more than one browser to do this.
Really informative article. I didn’t know about this thing on wordpress. Bookmarked!
Super blog and informative post…thanks for share…..