When setting up a WordPress blog that allows for multiple authors, it seems many people think all that is involved is to setup additional author profiles and/or start accepting guest posts. Unfortunately, it really isn’t that simple if you want to create a high quality WordPress blog.
Setting up a multi-author WordPress blog may require you to use a number of WordPress plugins to support a variety of functions. Ideally you’ll also want your theme to be hacked to help maximize the exposure your authors get. Examples include creating a “Write for Us” page, creating author profile pages, setting your theme to display the author’s profile below their posts, etc.
Multiple Author WordPress Plugins
Here are a couple WordPress plugins that we’ve covered in the past that are ideal for multi-author WordPress blogs:
- Author Exposed – Adds a full featured display of the authors profile.
- Role Manager Plugin – Allows you to control what the various WordPress user roles can and cannot do.
And here are a few other WordPress plugins that you may also have an interest in (we use a few of these here at WordPress Hacks):
- Author Advertising – Plugin that allows you to share Google AdSense income or other advertising between multiple authors.
- Blog Metrics – Collects blog metrics based upon the author of the posts.
- List Authors Widget – Displays a list of authors in your widgets panel linking to the authors.php page.
- Multiple Authors – Allows multiple authors to be listed for an individual WordPress post, automatically keeping track of who has edited the entry.
Multiple Author WordPress Hacks
Here are a few WordPress Hacks we’ve published in the past to help you hack your WordPress theme to be more multi-author friendly:
- How to Add an Author Page to Your Theme
- How to Change the Author Archives Permalink
- How to Single Out Author Comments
- How to Link Author’s Gravatars to Their Posts
- How to Add Bio Information to Your Posts
- How to Point Author Links to the Authors Website
- How to Create a Maximum Size for Your Images
- How to Use Multiple Stylesheets
I’m sure there are also some WordPress plugins or WordPress hacks which aren’t listed above. Have any multiple author tools or resources you’d like to add to this list? Let us know in the comments so we can update our post!
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is WordPress enthusiast who took his passion for WordPress to the next level back in 2007 by launching WPHacks.com as a place to share hacks and review WordPress-related products. You can learn more about him by following his personal tweets here.
I entered elements of code in my post above which don't seem to have appeared, if they appear at a ...
I found this MUCH easier to do :
How to make a page specific stylesheet in a Wordpress multiple-paged site:
1. Go ...
Dave, thanks for giving us a try. I strongly recommend reading the full instructions at http://www.ingboo.com/pvm/plugin .
Also, setting a custom ...
thanks for the additional info, will be giving it a go! 
I never use this kind of plugins with my blog but thanks for sharing this with us.
I never use this kind of plugins with my blog but thanks for sharing this with us.
Thanks…they are very much useful…
I am currently still trying to get my head around multi author blogs, I have setup a review site which uses multi authors and I know some of the plugins above will come in really handy. Not ones I had actually thought of.
Cheers
Ben
I never use this kind of plugins with my blog but thanks for sharing this with us.
Hi Kyle. These are some really useful resources. However, I’m just starting out with WordPress, and I need to create a blog that runs just like fmylife.com. Is this possible with WordPress? All I need is a way to create a multi-author blog which displays posts from the various users on the home page.
Can I do this with wordpress, or can you suggest an alternative blogging platform?
I’m a Drupal man myself but did enjoy your post. Thanks!
Nice very useful
Thanks for share
Thanks for the links. Are you also aware of any wordpress plugins that will collate site-traffic distributed among the different authors? Something like I know that author A’s articles got 1000 pageviews this month and author B’s got 2000…
Planning is very important when it comes to multi-author blogs and fortunately WordPress works well with multiple authors. Certainly some of the Plugins as mentioned help with creating an effective multi-author WordPress blogs.
Thanks for the great Post.