Yoast SEO: Alter Yoast SEO capabilities for roles

Yoast SEO ships with a variety of custom capabilities that are assigned to various roles, which allow for granular control over what features are available for a particular role. However, in some cases you might want to expand or limit these capabilities. To support this, we’ve introduced a filter named {$capability}_roles, where {$capability} needs to be replaced with the name of one of the capabilities that is registered by Yoast SEO.

Usage

Adding roles

The example below shows how you can use the filters to add one or multiple roles to a specific capability.

<?php

/**
 * Adds the editor and wpseo_editor roles to the view_site_health_checks capability.
 * 
 * @param array $roles The currently allowed roles.
 *
 * @return array The allowed roles.
 */
function add_site_health_roles( $roles ) {
    return array_merge( $roles, [ 'editor', 'wpseo_editor' ] );
}

add_filter( 'view_site_health_checks_roles', 'add_site_health_roles' );

Removing roles

The example below shows how you can use the filters to remove roles from a specific capability.

<?php

/**
 * Removes the wpseo_editor role from the view_site_health_checks_roles capability.
 * 
 * @param array $roles The currently allowed roles.
 *
 * @return array The allowed roles.
 */
function remove_site_health_roles( $roles ) {
    return array_filter( $roles, function( $role ) {
        if ( $role !== 'wpseo_editor' ) {
            return $role;
        }
  } );
}

add_filter( 'view_site_health_checks_roles', 'remove_site_health_roles' );

Applicable capabilities

Currently, the following capabilities are registered and can be altered with the filter:

• wpseo_bulk_edit - Not yet implemented. Allows users to access the bulk editing feature in SEO -> Tools.
• wpseo_edit_advanced_metadata - Allows users to edit advanced metadata in the Advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox. Please note: If you want to fully disable this for a user that also has the wpseo_manage_options capability, you will have to also remove this capability for said user.
• wpseo_manage_options - Allows users to access the Yoast SEO settings pages. Please note: This does not work for administrators.
• view_site_health_checks - Allows users to access the Site Health Checks that are present in WordPress.