How to Add WordPress Guest Authors to Your Posts

WordPress Guest Authors - publishpress authors screen

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.
  • WordPress Guest Authors who don’t need an account on your site.

WordPress Guest Authors - publishpress authors screen

From this “Authors” screen, you can create new authors for your content.

If you use the “Mapped User” 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.

WordPress Guest Authors - create guest author

Each WordPress Guest Author can have the following information:

  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Email
  • Website
  • Biographical Info

If you want the Guest Author to have an avatar, enter the email address that is connected to their Gravatar account.

WordPress Guest Authors details

Now when you go to create a post, you can choose the WordPress Guest Author:

WordPress choose a Guest Authors

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.

guest author profile

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.

Author

  • Steve Burge

    Steve is the founder of OSTraining. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Sarasota in the USA. Steve's work straddles the line between teaching and web development.

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