Trilobita

Editor Remit — Troubleshooting Guide

This guide covers the most common problems with Editor Remit, grouped by area. Work through the relevant section and follow each step in order.

Installation

The plugin does not appear after uploading

The plugin folder may have been uploaded incorrectly or the files are missing.

  1. In your FTP client or file manager, confirm the folder editor-remit exists at wp-content/plugins/editor-remit/.
  2. Confirm the file editor-remit.php is directly inside that folder — not inside a nested subfolder.
  3. Refresh Plugins > Installed Plugins in the WordPress admin.

The plugin activates but immediately shows a fatal error

Your server does not meet the minimum requirements.

  • Confirm your site runs WordPress 6.0 or higher (check Dashboard > Updates).
  • Confirm your server runs PHP 7.4 or higher (check Tools > Site Health > Info > Server).
  • If either requirement is not met, contact your host to upgrade before activating the plugin.

Nothing changes after activation

The plugin is active but no restrictions have been assigned yet. This is expected behaviour — a user with no categories assigned is unrestricted by design.

  1. Go to Users > Category Restrictions.
  2. Click Edit next to an editor or author and tick at least one category.
  3. Click Save.

Permissions & Role Issues

Restrictions are not applying to a user at all

Restrictions only apply to users with the Editor or Author role. Other roles are never restricted, regardless of any category assignments.

  • Go to Users > All Users and confirm the user’s role is Editor or Author.
  • Contributors, Subscribers, and Administrators are never restricted — this is intentional.
  • Confirm at least one category is ticked for the user under Users > Category Restrictions. A user with no categories assigned has no restriction applied.

An administrator is being restricted

Administrators are always unrestricted. If an admin appears to be blocked, the account may not have full administrator capabilities.

  1. Go to Users > All Users and confirm the role shown is Administrator.
  2. On a multisite installation, confirm the user is a Super Admin if restrictions need to be lifted network-wide.
  3. If the role is correct and the issue persists, a third-party plugin may be modifying capabilities — deactivate other plugins one at a time to identify the conflict.

The Category Restrictions section does not appear on a user’s profile

The section only appears for users with an Editor or Author role. It does not appear for Administrators, Contributors, or Subscribers.

  • Confirm you are editing a user with the Editor or Author role.
  • Confirm you are logged in as an Administrator — only administrators can see the editable version of the section.
  • A restricted user viewing their own profile will see a read-only summary of their permitted categories, not checkboxes.

Changes saved on the profile page are not sticking

Only administrators can save category restrictions. The save will be silently ignored if you lack the required capability.

  1. Confirm you are logged in as an Administrator.
  2. Try saving again — if the page reloads without a confirmation notice, a nonce (security token) may have expired. Reload the profile page and save immediately.
  3. Check that no browser extension is blocking the form submission.

Display & Filtering

A restricted user can still see posts they should not

Posts with no category (or only the default Uncategorised category) are intentionally visible to all restricted users so that content is not inadvertently locked away.

  • Check whether the visible posts have a category assigned. If they only have Uncategorised, this is expected behaviour.
  • Assign the posts to a specific category if you need them hidden from certain users.
  • If posts in a clearly non-permitted category are visible, check whether another plugin is overriding the pre_get_posts filter — deactivate other plugins one by one to test.

The block editor category panel still shows non-permitted categories

The panel filtering is a visual convenience only. Non-permitted categories are greyed out and cannot be ticked, but they remain visible. Server-side enforcement still applies regardless of what appears in the panel.

  • This is expected — the panel shows all categories but disables non-permitted ones.
  • If non-permitted categories can be ticked and saved, confirm the plugin is active and the user has at least one category assigned.
  • If JavaScript errors appear in the browser console, a plugin or theme conflict may be breaking the panel script — check the browser console for details.

Pages are not filtered or restricted

Page restrictions are disabled by default because WordPress does not add categories to pages out of the box.

  1. Go to Settings > Editor Remit.
  2. Tick Enable categories for pages and click Save Changes.
  3. Assign categories to any pages that should be restricted.
  4. Confirm the relevant editor or author has those categories assigned under Users > Category Restrictions.

The Category Restrictions column is missing from the Users list

The column is only visible to administrators.

  • Confirm you are logged in as an Administrator.
  • Check Screen Options (top-right of the Users list) and confirm the column is not hidden.

Saving & Publishing

Publishing a post is blocked with an error message

A restricted user must assign at least one of their permitted categories before publishing. The Uncategorised category does not count as a valid assignment.

  1. Open the post in the editor.
  2. In the category panel, tick one of the categories the user is permitted to use.
  3. Uncheck Uncategorised if it is the only category selected.
  4. Click Publish again.

A post is unexpectedly reverted to draft after saving

The plugin downgrades a post to draft (rather than discarding it) when a restricted user tries to publish outside their permitted categories. Content is preserved.

  • Read the error notice that appears at the top of the screen — it will indicate the reason.
  • Confirm only permitted categories are selected. Any non-permitted category in the selection will block publishing, even if a permitted category is also selected.
  • Remove non-permitted categories, then publish again.

Saving a draft is blocked

Draft saves do not require a category and should never be blocked. If a draft save fails, the cause is likely unrelated to Editor Remit.

  1. Check the browser console for JavaScript errors.
  2. Deactivate other plugins and retry — a conflict may be interfering with the save.
  3. Switch to the default WordPress theme (Twenty Twenty-Four) and retry to rule out a theme conflict.

Categories are silently removed from a post after saving

When a draft is saved with non-permitted categories, the plugin strips those categories after the save rather than blocking it. This is intentional — it matches the classic editor behaviour and prevents data loss.

  • Only categories the user is permitted to use will be retained.
  • If all selected categories are non-permitted, the post will be assigned the default Uncategorised category as a fallback.
  • To avoid this, only select categories from the permitted list before saving.

The block editor shows “Publishing failed” with no explanation

The server has rejected the save with a 403 error because the selected categories are outside the user’s permitted set.

  1. Open the Categories panel in the block editor sidebar.
  2. Remove any categories the user is not permitted to use.
  3. Ensure at least one permitted category is ticked.
  4. Click Publish again.

Performance

The post list is slow to load for restricted users

Editor Remit caches the list of permitted post IDs per user for five minutes to reduce database queries. The cache is rebuilt automatically when a post is saved or an admin updates a user’s category restrictions.

  • Confirm your site has a working object cache or persistent transient storage — without this, the cache is stored in the database and the benefit is reduced.
  • If the list feels slow immediately after changing a user’s restrictions, wait a few seconds and reload — the cache is cleared on save and rebuilt on the next page load.
  • If slowness persists, check whether another plugin is hooking into pre_get_posts and running expensive queries — deactivate other plugins one at a time to isolate the cause.

A restricted user sees a stale post list after an admin changes their categories

The per-user cache is cleared automatically when an admin saves category restrictions, but a browser cache or page cache plugin may serve an older version of the page.

  1. Ask the restricted user to do a hard reload in their browser (Ctrl + Shift + R on Windows/Linux, Cmd + Shift + R on Mac).
  2. If a full-page caching plugin is active (such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache), clear its cache from the plugin’s settings page.
  3. If the problem recurs regularly, check whether your caching plugin is caching logged-in admin pages — most caching plugins should exclude these by default.