How to Add WordPress Multiple Authors: Step-by-step Tutorial!

WordPress being one of the vaguest parts of the internet, there are still a lot of confusions and queries regarding a lot of topics. That’s where we come in with our easy-to-follow and simple tutorials dealing with those confusing subject matters. And today we deal with one of such matter and that is WordPress Multiple Authors.

While some prefer to own their personal sites, some websites deal with multiple authors contributing to the contents of the site. Not only this but sometimes multiple authors contribute to the same post. By default, WordPress only displays one of the authors, so how do you change such settings as to display all or multiple authors who have contributed to the post or the site?

Although WordPress does not come with the settings, you have nothing to worry about as there are WordPress plugins that enable you to perform such feature. So if you want to add multiple authors to your site or post, simply follow the easy tutorial below!

We have categorized the process of adding Multiple Authors into two processes. Adding Multiple Authors to a Blog and adding it to a Post. Feel free to check them out to help you guide through the processes.

1. How to Add WordPress Multiple Authors in a Blog or Website?

Let’s start off with a simple process of adding multiple authors to your website. This is comparatively easy as WordPress comes with the option and settings that enable you to Add an author. But to display them you will need a help of a plugin. And today we will be using the plugin Author Avatar Lists Plugin for this purpose.

Go to your Dashboard and Select the option for the user. Click on Add new and this will redirect you to a new page.

Fill in the information like Username, Display Name, Email and other fields. Make sure you create a secure password for them.

After filling out information, on the bottom of the page you will see a drop-down menu to choose the user role for the new author. Go ahead and select the role for the new user that you have just created.

Select Author if you want the user to have the access to write, edit, publish and even delete their articles.

Select Contributor if you want the user to have access to write and edit the article. But the major difference is contributors cannot delete or edit the posts once they go live.

Now that you are done creating the authors, go ahead and download and activate the plugin Author Avatar List. You can find it on WordPress official site or you can use the link down below. If you have any confusions regarding the process of Installing a WordPress plugin, you can also check out our handy tutorial that deals with the topic.

Learn More/ Download Plugin

After activating and installing the plugin, you can then go ahead and click on Appearance and then on Widgets.

There you will find a newly added option for Author Avatars Widget. Go ahead and drag the widget to your desired area.

Edit the Title of the Widget, which roles you want to display and what informations to display. After you are done, simply Save the Changes. And you are done, you can now view the Author Widget on your site!

2. How to Add WordPress Multiple Authors on a single Post?

The easiest way to add multiple authors to your WordPress page or post is by using a WordPress plugin. And today we will be using the plugin Co-Author Plus for this purpose.

Learn More/ Download Plugin

Start by Installing and Activating the plugin.  You can download it directly from the official WordPress site, or use the link down below!

Step One: Add Authors to Your Site

After you have installed and activated the plugin, go to Users from your Dashboard and then you will see a newly added menu for Guest Authors. Select the menu and you will be redirected to a new page.

Click on the option for Add New and go ahead and fill the author’s details. Enter the name and the display name, full author name as well as the contact information.

Once you are done adding a new author, you can now assign them to the posts that they have contributed in. For this, first, go to the post that you want to add the authors to. 

You can see a newly added meta box labeled as Authors. You will also notice the option of searching and adding the authors. Go ahead and add the names of the authors that you have just added. You can even reorder the author names and remove the ones that you don’t want. 

Once you are happy with the order of the authors and everything, you can go ahead and Save the changes that you have just made by clicking on Publish or Update.

Step 2: Add Template Tags

Now that you have your authors ready, you need to add the template tags for your authors to be displayed. By default, WordPress themes usually use the_author() template to display the author information. So you need to update the template tags to the ones used by Co-Author Plus. For this, follow the steps below for guidance and you will be done in no time.

For quick reference here are the codes for Co-Author Plus that you might want to add.

• coauthors() – Displays the first and last name of each author without any links.
• coauthors_posts_links() – Displays the first and last name of each author with links to their profile page.
• coauthors_firstnames() – Displays the first name of authors.
• coauthors_lastnames() – Displays the last name of authors.

First, go to your Dashboard and click on the option for Appearance. You can then go ahead and click on Editor.

Once you are redirected to the Editor Page, go to the right-hand side to find the settings for Index, Page, Posts, or Categories depending on your theme. You can then go ahead and add the code from above. And you are done.

You will see multiple authors being displayed for the posts or page that you have added the code to.

Wrapping It Up!

One of the easiest ways to add WordPress multiple authors to your post or site by using a plugin! We hope we have solved your confusions regarding the topic. With thorough research, we have come up with the best plugin to use that solves all the problem, we recommend you use the same for best results!

If you liked this article, why not check out more of our articles that dwells on the subject of how WordPress works?

• How to Add WordPress Background Image?
• Start A WordPress Podcast: Beginner’ Guide!
• How to Add WordPress Header Images?