How to Restrict WordPress Front End “Edit” Links to Admins Only

Originally Posted on December 21, 2011 Last Updated on March 5, 2018

Say you have a blog where you allow Authors & Editors on the site, but for whatever reason, you don’t want the Edit links that can be displayed on the front end with edit_post_link() to show up for them. Well, here’s how you’d do that.

Firstly, this isn’t an easy, global situation. You need to find all instances of the edit_post_link() function in your theme. Once you do, replace that call altogether with:

<?php global $user_level;

      get_currentuserinfo();

      if ($user_level == 10) { edit_post_link('Edit', '<p class="button edit">', '</p>'); } ?>

I use this on a site that I allow users to create new posts (via the Gravity Forms plugin), but I don’t want them to be able to access the backend at all, though I still want administrators to be able to easily access any post via those “Edit” links.

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