If you have a WordPress site with several different contributors or guest bloggers, you will probably want to have a system that can identify the different authors and show a quick bio of the author in the article. We have shown you how you can add an author box manually to your theme, but if you prefer not to tinker with the code, here are a few plugins that you can use.
1. Custom Author Byline
Custom Author Byline allows you to add the author’s name to any post or page on your WordPress blog without having to create another account for the author. This is great if you are publishing a one-time article (such as guest post) from this particular writer and you do not want to give he/she access to your WordPress installation.
With the Custom Author Byline plugin, you only have to add the name of the author in the panel that appears below your post editor.
Each author you add into the panel will also have a custom URL which you could use to lead to the author’s website or an author’s bio page.
2. Co-Authors Plus
If you have blog posts written by two or more authors, then you should get this plugin. Co-Authors Plus allows you to name two or more authors to a single blog post just by typing their names into an input box.
If you have a guest post, you could also use this plugin to give due credit to the author without having to create a user account for him or her. Instead, you would be creating a guest author profile for your guest blogger.
The blog post will then appear on each author’s feeds and archives page. Each one will be able to edit the blog posts that he or she co-authored.
3. AuthorSure
If you are an avid SEO practitioner, you will love AuthorSure, as it makes it easy for you to take advantage of AuthorRank. AuthorRank is a relatively new, but important, ranking factor that is being used by Google to help it sort its search results. The higher AuthorRank your authors have, the better the chances that the post would rank high on Google search results.
It used to be that you would have to do a lot of HTML work into your blog posts just to set it up to take advantage of AuthorRank. AuthorSure takes care of these processes for you.
With this plugin, you could easily connect your posts to your author’s Google + profiles and pages, author bio pages, and archives using the “rel=author” and “rel=publisher” tags and several other ways.
It also has other features such as:
- Compatibility with single user and multi-author sites
- Setting up pages and posts to make it easier to get Google’s verification for authorship
- The ability to create links from your site’s author bio page to the author’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Skype and Google profiles
- The ability for you to control how rich snippets are presented
- Available support for easy installation and set up for a wide variety of themes
There you go, these are the top three author bylines plugins that you should try for your WordPress blog!
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