Introducing Admin Settings: Fine-Grained Control Over Access and Features in Headless Hostman

By Ben Butler, Founder and Lead Developer, Headless Hostman

At Headless Hostman, we’re always looking for ways to give you more control, more security, and more power over how your static WordPress sites are managed. Today, I’m excited to introduce a brand new feature we just rolled out to every site on the platform: Admin Settings.

Yeah, I know — not the most inventive name. But don’t let that fool you. This new admin panel is just the foundation for a growing set of advanced tools that will give you unprecedented control over what your users can do, see, and manage.

Why We Built It

As more teams, contractors, and clients interact with Headless Hostman-powered sites, the need for role-based access controls has become increasingly clear. Not everyone should be able to push the entire site live. Not everyone should be able to view diagnostics or performance settings.

Even with Admin-level users, you might want to restrict who gets to do what.

That’s why we created Admin Settings: to let you customize access, delegate roles, and lock down critical site features based on your team’s needs.

Default Behavior

Out of the box, here’s how access is defined:

• Admins get access to everything — including the new Admin Settings menu itself.
• Site Editors can only push or delete individual pages. They don’t get access to full-site tools or advanced diagnostics.

If you never touch the Admin Settings panel, this is the default behavior.

But now, you can dive deeper.

Role Delegation and the Power of “Site Masters”

WordPress traditionally limits role management to predefined user types: admin, editor, author, etc. But we know real-world teams don’t always map cleanly to those boxes.

So we added the ability to assign any user — regardless of role — as a Site Master.

This special designation overrides their default role and gives them access to specific tools and features, based on what you assign. Want to give a contractor full push access but not show them performance settings? Easy. Want to restrict your client (who is technically an admin) from pushing content live? Also easy.

You’ll see all your users listed in the Admin Settings panel and can assign Site Master permissions on a per-feature basis.

Delegate Beyond Admins

Most importantly with this, what if you have Admins who need to be Admins but shouldn’t see certain things? Easy, assign Site Masters and delegate what you want only to them.

This allows you access control, while allowing regular Admins to do their usual business without interruption.

Feature Delegation: Total Control, Menu by Menu

This is where the magic happens. Admin Settings allows you to toggle access to every major feature we offer, including:

• Push Delegation
  Choose who can do full-site pushes, individual page pushes, or nothing at all.
• Feature Access
  Lock or unlock settings like:
  • Performance tools
  • Post mapping
  • Diagnostics
  • (Coming soon) Global Elements

As more tools roll out, this menu will expand to give you even finer control and more features like assigning emails to “Push completions,” and more.

Built From Your Feedback

Every piece of this new system came from user feedback. We listened. We built. And we’ll keep building based on what you need most.

As always — keep the feature requests coming. We’re listening.