Access Tab — Who Can Send & Be Contacted

The Access tab controls every gate around the contact form: where it appears, which roles can send a message, and which roles can receive one.

Where the form appears

A single toggle at the top:

• Show a “Contact” tab on every member profile — when off, the profile-tab integration is hidden entirely. Members can still be contacted via the [buddypress-contact-me] shortcode if you want to drive contact through specific landing pages.

Recommended ON. Each member can still individually opt out from their own profile settings — see Per-member opt-out.

Who can send messages

A grid of role chips covering every WordPress role on the site, plus a special Visitors (not logged in) chip for guest contact.

• Tick the chips for the roles you want to allow.
• Use Select all / Clear all to apply to the visible group.
• An empty grid is persisted — you can intentionally lock all roles out (not common, but supported).

The Visitors chip controls whether the form appears for logged-out users. When unticked, guests see no form on member profiles and the REST endpoint rejects unauthenticated submissions with “You are not allowed to send messages.”

Who can be contacted

The same chip grid, applied to the recipient side. A member’s Contact tab only renders if their role intersects this allow-list (or they are an administrator — admins are always contactable regardless).

Use this to restrict inbound messages to a specific group: mentor accounts, support staff, paid members. Members in unchecked roles do not show the Contact tab on their profiles even when the global toggle above is on.

Members always have the final say

The blue notice at the bottom is a reminder: even when a role is allowed, the individual member can still opt out via Profile → Settings → General → Let other members contact me. The plugin never overrides the per-member preference — see Per-member opt-out.

Mobile-friendly chips

The grid uses chip controls instead of a multi-select dropdown. This is intentional:

• All options are visible at once — no hidden state hiding behind a click.
• Tap targets are large enough for thumb interaction on mobile.
• Select all / Clear all apply to the visible group, scoped per-grid.

Save behaviour

Saving the Access tab only touches the role allow-lists and the Show a Contact tab toggle. Notification preferences set on the Notifications tab are preserved — the two tabs save independently.

What’s next

Once access is configured, the License tab links your purchase to your site so future updates flow into the WordPress Plugins screen.