Yesterday I released a small new plugin to the WordPress respository. It’s a quick and very simple plugin which does one specific task – which is to restrict access to the backend of WordPress to every user except administrators.

When activated, when users log in they will be redirected back to the blog homepage and if they try to access the backend, including their profile, they will again simply be redirected back to the homepage.

I plan to vastly improve the plugin in the next few weeks; upcoming features in the next version will enable you to choose access levels based on roles and customise the page a user is redirected too.

You can download the plugin over at WordPress here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backend-user-restrictor/

Let me know what you think and what features you would like to see in a future releases

UPDATE: 9th May 2010

Version 1.1 has been released with the thanks from a kind contribution from Dustin Vietzke. The plugin update features;

• Updated to allow specified pages to be seen
• Accounts for https connections
• Tested upto WordPress 3.0 Beta