Mark Wilkinson

Found the answer eventually thanks for looking at the way other plugins have done this, most notably the Whistles plugin by Justin Tadlock. Below is my solution.

When register the post type with register_post_type you can pass capability types like this (for a custom post type named bulletin):

'capability_type' => 'bulletin',
'map_meta_cap' => true,
'capabilities' => array(

// meta caps (don't assign these to roles)
'edit_post'              => 'edit_bulletin',
'read_post'              => 'read_bulletin',
'delete_post'            => 'delete_bulletin',

// primitive/meta caps
'create_posts'           => 'create_bulletins',

// primitive caps used outside of map_meta_cap()
'edit_posts'             => 'edit_bulletins',
'edit_others_posts'      => 'manage_bulletins',
'publish_posts'          => 'manage_bulletins',
'read_private_posts'     => 'read',

// primitive caps used inside of map_meta_cap()
'read'                   => 'read',
'delete_posts'           => 'manage_bulletins',
'delete_private_posts'   => 'manage_bulletins',
'delete_published_posts' => 'manage_bulletins',
'delete_others_posts'    => 'manage_bulletins',
'edit_private_posts'     => 'edit_bulletins',
'edit_published_posts'   => 'edit_bulletins'
),

Then you need to assign the these capabilities to users on plugin activation (or another appropriate hook) to allow them to use the post type:

function mdw_plugin_activation() {

	/* Get the administrator role. */
	$mdw_role = get_role( 'administrator' );

	/* If the administrator role exists, add required capabilities for the plugin. */
	if ( !empty( $rhsstf_role ) ) {

		$mdw_role->add_cap( 'manage_bulletins' );
		$mdw_role->add_cap( 'create_bulletins' );
		$mdw_role->add_cap( 'edit_bulletins'   );
	}

}

register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'mdw_plugin_activation' );

Excellent thanks for that – it works a treat. I thought there would be an easier way, it was just getting to know how the plugin did this.

Thanks again.

My amended plugin is now here:

https://gist.github.com/wpmark/5007195