Onboarding a shop manager in ten minutes
Give someone the dashboard without giving them wp-admin - capabilities, the shortcode page, and what they can and can't reach.
Guides Md Aminur Islam
The usual reason to install a frontend dashboard is that you want someone running the store day to day without handing them the WordPress admin. Here is the whole setup.
1. Create the user as a Shop manager
WooCommerce’s Shop manager role already carries the manage_woocommerce capability, which is the single check StoreSuite gates the dashboard on. Create the user under Users → Add New and assign that role.
Administrators have the capability too, so you can test with your own account - but test with a real Shop manager account before you hand it over. Administrator hides a lot of permission problems.
2. Point them at the dashboard page
On activation StoreSuite creates a page containing the [storesuite_dashboard] shortcode and selects it in Settings. Send the shop manager that page’s URL. That is the whole onboarding - there is no separate login.
If you’d rather use your own page, put the shortcode on it and select it under StoreSuite → Settings.
3. Close off wp-admin
This is the part people get wrong. manage_woocommerce is a WooCommerce capability, and the Shop manager role that carries it also grants access to wp-admin’s WooCommerce screens. Installing a frontend dashboard doesn’t take that away - on its own it gives you a nicer surface for the same permissions, not a smaller set of them.
So turn the switch on. WooCommerce → StoreSuite → General carries Restrict Admin Area Access: with it enabled, non-administrators who try to reach wp-admin land on the frontend dashboard instead, and the WP Dashboard link hides itself from their sidebar.
Enable Restrict Admin Area Access before you hand the URL over, then confirm it while logged in as the real Shop manager. Administrators are exempt by design, so testing with your own account will show you a wp-admin you assume they can reach too.
4. Set the palette while you’re there
Settings carries predefined and custom colour palettes, a sidebar logo, and a collapsible icon rail. Spending two minutes here is the difference between a dashboard that feels like part of the business and one that feels like a plugin.
If the URLs 404
Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes. StoreSuite flushes rewrite rules on activation and update, but a rules cache that was written before the plugin’s endpoints registered will 404 until it is rebuilt.
