Hi laurathom2!
By default the plugin sets the “show_admin_bar_front” to false – ie. members will not see the admin menu bar at the top of the page that you might normally see when logged in as a WordPress user. However if they go to the /wp-admin/ URL they will be able to see the WP dashboard and access any areas of the site they are permitted to by their WP user role.
They are unable to see posts from /wp-admin. All they see is dashboard and profile, even with contributor status.
Hi laurathom2!
Once MembershipWorks logs the user in as a WP user, we do not interfere with or manage anything to do with access based on the WP user role. If a contributor cannot see the Posts menu you may have another plugin interfering with that – you will want to make sure to disable all other plugins that deal with member/role access.