HDWebmobile Media Folder Roles
The media folder roles WordPress plugin that organizes your Media Library into folders and restricts access by user role — fully compatible with PublishPress Capabilities.
Overview
HDWebmobile Media Folder Roles lets you organize your WordPress Media Library into hierarchical folders and restrict access to those folders based on user roles. Instead of one long, unsorted grid of every image and file your whole team has ever uploaded, editors and contributors only see the folders they’re actually allowed into.
Key Features
- Create and manage hierarchical media folders
- Assign role-based permissions to each folder
- Restrict media viewing and editing based on folder permissions
- Fully compatible with PublishPress Capabilities for advanced role management
How to Use
1. Create your folders. Go to Media > Folders — a standard WordPress taxonomy screen. Add a folder by name the same way you’d add a category, and optionally assign a Parent Media Folder to build a hierarchy (e.g. “Team Photos” under “Marketing”).
2. Set who can access each folder. Click into any folder to edit it and you’ll see an Allowed Roles checklist alongside the normal name/slug/parent/description fields. Tick every role that should be able to view and use media inside that folder — Administrators can always access everything regardless of what’s ticked. Leaving every box unticked means only Administrators can see that folder’s contents.
3. Organize and browse from the Media Library. Open Media > Library and you’ll see a Folders panel added to the left of the normal grid/list view. From here you can click New Folder to create one without leaving the Library, drag and drop media items onto a folder in the sidebar to file them, click a folder to filter the grid down to just its contents, and use Rename/Delete above the folder tree while a folder is selected.
4. What non-admin users see. Once you save role restrictions on a folder, any logged-in user whose role isn’t on that folder’s Allowed Roles list simply won’t see that folder or its media in their own Media Library — the filtering happens automatically on both the classic list view and the AJAX-driven media grid/uploader, so it applies consistently everywhere media is selected (post editor, featured image, etc.).
5. Using PublishPress Capabilities (optional). If you also run PublishPress Capabilities, its more granular capability controls layer on top of this plugin’s role-based folder access without any extra setup — this plugin doesn’t require PublishPress Capabilities to work on its own.
This media folder roles WordPress setup is especially useful for agencies managing several clients’ assets in one install, or any team where the marketing department shouldn’t be able to browse HR’s or finance’s uploads by accident — each department simply gets its own folder tree, visible only to the roles you’ve ticked.
Limitations
Please read before installing:
- Access is controlled per folder, not per individual file — there’s no way to restrict a single file differently from the rest of its folder
- Administrators always see every folder’s contents regardless of the Allowed Roles setting, by design
- There’s no bulk-import tool to automatically sort existing, already-uploaded media into folders — older files stay wherever they are until manually dragged in
Quick Setup
- Upload the hdwebmobile-media-folder-roles folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Go to Media > Folders to start organizing your library.
Latest Version
Current stable version in readme: 1.1.4 (Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 7.0. Earlier 1.1.3 removed PHP session usage in favor of user meta and strengthened nonce/capability checks on upload and AJAX flows.)
See our other WordPress plugins for more WooCommerce and site-utility tools.