PublishPress Authors is the best plugin for adding authors, co-authors, multiple authors and guest authors to WordPress posts.
PublishPress Authors allows you to create, manage and display authors for all your WordPress content. The plugin provides author boxes that can display one author, coauthors, multiple authors or even guest authors. The boxes have the author bio, name, avatar, description and more. You can also place the author boxes in widgets, shortcodes and Gutenberg blocks.
Here are the some most important features of PublishPress Authors:
Upgrade to Authors Pro
This plugin is the free version of the PublishPress Authors plugin. The Pro version comes with all the features you need to create beautiful and useful author profiles. Click here to purchase the best premium WordPress author box plugin now!
PublishPress Authors gives you multiple ways to show author profiles. You can display authors under your content, in a widget, using shortcodes and more.
The Author Boxes feature in PublishPress Authors provides five default layouts. You can use these layouts, customize them or click “New Author Box” and create your own layouts.
Click here to see how to customize author boxes.
On the frontend of your site. PublishPress Authors gives you several different options to display the authors’ box:
Click here to read about displaying authors.
With PublishPress Authors, you can set multiple authors for each post. When you write a post, you’ll see a box in the right sidebar. Here you can choose from all the users on your site, and assign them as coauthors.
Click here to get started with PublishPress Authors.
Using PublishPress Authors, you can create Guest Authors who don’t need an account on your site. PublishPress will treat Guest Authors identically to Authors who are linked users.
You will be able to select and display Guest Authors in exactly the same way as for registered users. Each Guest Author can have a full profile, plus an avatar, and their own archive page for blog posts.
You can create two types of Guest Authors. You can add authors to a new “Guest Author” user role, or add them without a connected account.
Click here to see how to create Guest Authors.
Author Categories is a feature that allows you to have different types of authors for WordPress post. For example, you can label one user as an “Author”, one as “Contributor” and one as an “Editor”. This enables you to give different types of credit to the all the people who work on your content.
PublishPress Authors Pro has a feature that allows you do more with Author Categories. You can create an “Author Categories Box”. This is a display format for your images that is specifically designed to group authors together in their categories.
Click here to see how to use Author Categories.
PublishPress Authors allows you to customize the user details for each author. This is possible with the “Author Fields” feature. These fields can be displayed using the Author Boxes feature. There are several fields available in the Free version of the Authors plugin including First Name, Last Name, Email, Website, Job Title.
Click here to see how to use Author Fields
The Author Lists feature allows you to show a custom display of authors. For example, the “Author Index” view can organize your authors alphabetically. There will be a row of letters on the top of this display. If you click on any of the letters, you’ll be able to drill down to view only the authors whose names begin with that letter. There’s also a “Author Recent” view that allows you to show your authors, together with their most recent posts.
Click here to see how to use Author Lists.
PublishPress Authors can replace the default WordPress author pages. The URLs of the pages will not change, but you can customize the pages using the settings on this screen.
Your author page will appear with an author box on the top of the screen and the author’s posts underneath. You can choose a “List” or a “Grid” option and you’re also free to create your own layouts.
Click here to see how to use Author Pages.
PublishPress Authors Pro enables you to create author fields and enhance your author profiles. You can add Text, WYSIWYG, Link and email address fields. Then you can place those author fields in author bio profiles using custom layouts. The Pro version of Authors supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, YouTube, TikTok and more.
Click here to see how to use Custom Fields.
The Pro versions of the PublishPress plugins are well worth your investment. The Pro versions have extra features and faster support. Click here to join PublishPress.
Join PublishPress and you’ll get access to these Pro plugins:
Together, these plugins are a suite of powerful publishing tools for WordPress. If you need to create a professional workflow in WordPress, with moderation, revisions, permissions and more… then you should try PublishPress.
Bug reports for PublishPress Authors are welcomed in our repository on GitHub. Please note that GitHub is not a support forum, and that issues that aren’t properly qualified as bugs will be closed.
This plugin is partly based on Co-Authors Plus, which includes the work of batmoo, danielbachhuber and automattic. This plugin also uses work from the Bylines plugin by danielbachhuber.
There are two ways to install the PublishPress Authors plugin:
Through your WordPress site’s admin
Manually uploading the plugin to your repository
With PublishPress Authors, you can choose multiple author bios for each post. When you write a post, you’ll see the Authors box in the right sidebar. You can choose from all the users on your site, and assign them as authors.
PublishPress Authors gives you multiple ways to show author bios. You can display authors under your content, in a widget, using shortcodes and more.
Using PublishPress Authors, you can create Guest Authors who don’t need an account on your site. PublishPress will treat Guest Authors identically to Authors who have WordPress accounts. Each user will have their own author profile.
PublishPress Authors allows you to showcase the work of each individual author with customizable author pages where you decide which post information is displayed including tags, read more links, excerpts, and more.
PublishPress Authors Pro enables you to create custom fields for each author profile. You can add Text, WYSIWYG, Links, email fields and more.
PublishPress Authors Pro enables you to build custom layouts for authors. Using all your author information and custom fields, you can design beautiful layouts for your authors.
PublishPress Authors allows you to organize your authors by categories. You can organize your authors into groups such as “Authors”, “Coauthors”, “Reviews”, “Editors”, and more.
You have several different options for displaying authors using the PublishPress Authors plugin:
PublishPress Authors does use a different system than the WordPress core, so there may be some work involved with moving author data.
When you first install PublishPress Authors, our plugin will try to import all your authors. However, there may be some more work needed if you have a large site or have been using a different plugin. After installing PublishPress Authors, go to the “Posts” screen to see if your authors have imported correctly.
If you have a very large site with 1,000s or authors or posts, we recommend you use the WP CLI command line system.
Click here to see how to import WordPress users.
PublishPress Authors has a Co-Authors Plus import feature. Co-Authors Plus is a popular but older alternative to PublishPress Authors. This import will bring across all your author profiles. It will also keep track of which posts the authors are associated with. If you want to migrate your site from the CoAuthors Plus plugin, please try this on a test site before attempting it on a live site.
Click here to see how to import Co-Authors Plus authors.
You can import from the Byline plugin to PublishPress Authors. Start with the old Byline plugin installed on your site. Go to “Authors”, then “Maintenance”. Look for the import option.
Click here to see how to import Byline authors.
The PublishPress Authors plugin provides two widgets.
The “Post Author” widget will display a list of authors for the current post. It is one of several ways that you can show the authors of a post. In your WordPress site, go to Appearance > Widgets. Look for the “Post Author” widget.
Click here to see how to use the Post Author widget.
The “Authors List” widget will display a list of all the authors on your site. If you want to show the authors of the post being viewed, try the Post Author widget. In your WordPress site, go to Appearance > Widgets. Look for the “Authors List” widget.
Click here to see how to use the Authors List widget.
PublishPress Authors works well with the Elementor plugin. There are multiple options for showing Author profiles on your site. All of these will work with Elementor. However, we have made sure to make sure PublishPress Authors works with inside the main Elementor layout builder. Perhaps the easiest option for the Elementor layout builder is to use the Post Author widget. You will then see a simple author box in your Elementor layout.
Click here to see how to create Elementor Authors.
PublishPress Authors works well with the Divi theme. There are multiple options for showing Author profiles on your site. All of these will work with Divi. We have made sure that PublishPress Authors works with inside the main Divi layout builder. Perhaps the easiest option for the Divi layout builder is to use the Post Author widget. Go to Appearance > Widgets. Create a new widget region using this Divi box. You will then see a simple author box in your Divi theme.
Click here to see how to create Divi Authors.
The PublishPress Authors plugin allows you to show author profiles using this a snippet of PHP code. This code can be modified in many way to suit your needs. Don’t worry if you’re not technical. There are also other ways to show your authors that require no code. We recommend that you add these code snippets to a child theme, as that is best practice for WordPress theme development. We do have child themes available for some popular themes.
Click here to see how to modify the authors output.
Author bios can be a tricky area in WordPress because many themes try to add their own author details. We try to help customers using PublishPress Authors and make sure that the plugin works with your theme. So far, we have child themes available to help compatibility with some common themes including:
There are other plugins available such as Co-Authors Plus, Simple Author Box, Molongui, Starbox and more. These are all really good plugins. PublishPress Authors stands out because of the advanced features and flexibility.