How to Add WordPress Guest Authors to Your Posts
Do you accept guest blog posts on your WordPress site?
It’s a great way to drive traffic to your site, improve your SEO, and create connections with other bloggers.
However, by default, everyone who writes on your WordPress site has to have a user account. So to accept a guest author post, you need to create a user account that the author may never use.
One way around this is the PublishPress Authors plugin.
After installing both PublishPress Authors, to go the “Authors” link in your admin area.
You’ll now see an “Authors” screen that shows everyone who has written content on your site. There are two kinds of Authors here:
- Authors who are mapped to regular WordPress users and can share all their details.
- Guest Authors who don’t need to login to your site. These accounts are in the “Guest Author” role and will not be able to login to the WordPress dashboard or update their profile.
From this “Authors” screen, you can create new authors for your content.
If you use the “Registered Author” option, you can connect the Author to a WordPress user. Or … and this is where we solve our problem … you can leave this blank and create a Guest Author.
PublishPress treats WordPress Guest Authors identically to Authors who are mapped to users. You will be able to select and display Guest Authors in exactly the same way as for mapped users.
You can add more details for these guest authors. Click on the “Edit Author Profile” link:
Each WordPress Guest Author can have the following information:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Website
- Biographical Info
If you want the Guest Author to have an avatar, enter the email address that is connected to their Gravatar account.
Now when you go to create a post, you can choose the WordPress Guest Author:
Save your content and visit the front of your site. You’ll be able to see the Guest Author profile, sitting next to real authors. PublishPress Authors has a ton of different layout options for your author profiles.
That’s it. Problem solved. You don’t need to create a useless login and password for your WordPress Guest Authors. Let the PublishPress Authors plugin take care of setting up your guest posts for you.
