What are the capabilities of each role?

Per wordpress.org, the following summarizes the capabilities of each of the five default WordPress roles:

Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
Editor – Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users’ posts, etc.
Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
Subscriber – Somebody who can only manage their profile

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