Are you looking for the best way to give credit to your blog authors?
If you are running a blog site, you must want to credit blogs to authors more often. But as the native WordPress limits author profile customization, you may suffer from the lack of personalization here.
However, the WP Author Box plugin is the best solution to solve this problem. This plugin allows you to create, personalize, credit to content, and manage authors from a single dashboard.
In this blog, you are about to learn what WP Author Box can do for you, and how you can take advantage of it. Let’s explore.
What is WP Author Box Plugin
The WP Author Box plugin is a very straightforward yet powerful plugin for creating real-time author profiles in WordPress. You can feel at home with its simplified user interface.
This plugin is meant to help you easily onboard and manage multiple authors on your WordPress website. As WordPress doesn’t allow multi-author management, this plugin does that for you through special means.
So, you are able to credit more than one author in your posts with the help of the WP Author Box plugin. The author profile created with this plugin can be verified by linking their own profile URL and social profiles, enhancing the trust and credibility of your content.
Also, you can onboard new authors directly on your site without even adding them as WordPress users. So, in case you want to maintain the confidentiality of your dashboard, but still want to give credit to external authors, it’s possible with the WP Author Box plugin.
Not to mention the easy author onboarding process. The plugin has been deliberately made easier for beginners to be able to onboard authors with a few clicks. Sounds promising?
Here’s a list of the key benefits that WP Author Box brings to your table-
- Very easy author onboarding process
- Multiple author management and crediting
- Real author profile with self & Social profile links
- Simplified guest posting with a direct author profile
- Sync site users as authors with a 1-click sync button
- Detailed author profile personalization options
- Dedicated authors page feature
- Shortcode to fit all page builders and themes
Have you gone over the key features? In that case, you can choose to explore the controls and use cases of WP Author Box more deeply.
How to take advantage of the key features of WP Author Box
If you are starting out with the WP Author Box plugin, then this part of the article can help you better grasp the features and use cases.
Let’s start.
Easy Author Profile Creation
What most users loved about WP Author Box is its streamlined author onboarding system. Right from your WordPress dashboard, you can insert the author information and upload an image (not mandatory), and it’s done.
Here’s how you can do it step by step.
Step -1: Click on the Authors tab.
You can go inside the WP Author Box dashboard and click on the Authors card to start the onboarding process.
Step -2: Click to proceed.
Now you can click on the Add New button to bring out the profile creation form.
Step -3: Fill up author information.
The form displays several information fields where you can add your authors. You can find the first name, last name, email, profile link, and author image options at first glance. Only the first three options are mandatory.
Step -4: Add author bio.
Next, you can add a short bio about the profession or a quote from the author. Right below, you will have a long text field to add full bio. Here, you can also include media files and links, as well as add text customizations.
Step – 5: Social link insert.
WP Author Box provides three social link fields for each author. Due to the social media popularity and reliability, the plugin right now supports facebook, twitter, and linkedin links.
Once you fill up the link fields, the corresponding social icons will appear on the live preview.
Step- 6: Save and preview.
Once you save your author profile, it will redirect you to a preview page with a form successful message. This preview page also displayed the info that you filled in earlier.
Step- 7: View and manage
Now you can click on the Authors Dashboard option again to view the existing author profiles. You can edit or delete entries from this window.
Showcase Your Author Box
So you are done creating a new author profile. What’s next?
Now you can assign the new author to your post to display the author profile made with WP Author Box. This is the basic part provided by WordPress itself, just how you have assigned authors for a specific post before.
To start, you can try to edit one of your posts from your dashboard.
Inside, you can open the post settings tab to see the post publishing information. Just so you know, WordPress assigns the current user as the default author of any pages or posts you create.
Now you can click on the author name and change it to the one you created using the WP Author Box plugin. If done, you can save the page and view it in real time.
On the published page, you will be able to find the author box sitting below the post like this.
This is how easily you can show your personalized author box on your WordPress site to give credit to your authors.
Easy Multi-Author Crediting
Want to give credit to multiple authors for the same post? Done!
WP Author Box lets you credit more than one author for your published content. The option works as a custom field on your post editing page. From the field, you can select the guest author’s name and contribution title to onboard him/her.
To start, go to your content and scroll to the bottom of the page till you find the guest author column.
There should be a button reading Add Another below. You can click on this button to add one more guest author field.
The two custom fields appearing on your page lets you choose the guest author from the existing ones in the list. And also, you can write down their contribution type (editor, reviewer, etc.).
Additionally, you can add as many guest authors as you want. If you want to credit a contribution type content to a group of authors, it’s easily possible.
The guest author names are visible on the author profile card on your landing page. Your visitors will be able to see and click on the guest author names for their detailed profiles.
Easy right? But haven’t done many customizations, did you? That’s coming right next.
Author Card Personalization
WP Author Box is not just known for its easy author onboarding experience but also for customizing the author cards for better personalization. And there is a wide range of options available to give you the full experience.
To access the settings, you can go to WP Author Box dashboard and click on the settings tab from the screen.
Inside, you can find three options-
- Design Settings contains the personalization options to make your author card unique and fit your landing style.
- General Settings provides some display options for you to change the layout of your content.
- License Settings is the license field for activating WP Author Box Pro plugin.
Exploring Design Settings
Inside the design settings tab, you will find a wide range of options to personalize your profile card. The options start with background color and range up to border and box shadows.
There’s a live preview window on your right so you can see the changes instantly. These customizations add more to your plate and enhance your experience with the plugin. Also lets you boost your branding through this.
The options are divided into some segments:
- Container
- Author Name
- Author Bio
- Author Image
- Author Social
- Content Ordering
Each segment has visibility conditions and personalizations. For instance, you can enjoy text color, margin, and typography for the name and bio.
The other segments such as container, image and social have border, border radius, margin, padding, and color options. Each of the options are active and ready to take on your creativity.
Especially, the social segment also allows hover color effect to be applied to social icons. This way, you can make interactive icons very easily.
Also, you can change the order of the displayed elements at the bottom of the options. The Content Ordering allows you to reposition the image, social icons, name, and bio. You can drag the items up and down to change order.
With this, the front end should look like how you just designed it.
This is the magic of this amazing author box plugin.
However, you can enjoy 100% personalization with WP Author Box Pro. So make sure to check out the benefits it brings to you.
Exploring General Settings or Global Settings
As mentioned previously, the general settings tab lets you tweak some display options and allows you to change author page layout. Here, you can find options to show or hide author cards on single posts.
The options also let you choose the position of the author card. So you can place it at the bottom of your post, or at the top. You can also enable/disable guest author profile links.
And you can choose the layout of the single author page. This layout is powered by WP Author Box, so you don’t have to design it separately. This acts as a single archive for each author.
Explore Single Page Layout
Following the layout settings above, you can have your audience view single author pages in your selected layout. If your visitors click on the author name/URL, they will be redirected to the single author page.
The page above is generated by WP Author Box, so you don’t have to create a separate archive right away.
And now you have come so far with all the customizations, but that’s not all. There’s more!
Dedicated Individual Author Personalization
If you’re wondering if you could personalize a specific author card different way than the global settings, there’s good news for you.
When you are editing an author profile, you might have noticed the Author Settings tab on the top bar. This option allows individual customizations for your author cards.
Inside the tab, you will need to enable the radio to Yes in order to activate individual personalization.
Once you do that, you will be able to enjoy all the customizations that you have experienced on the Design Settings page. (except for the content ordering)
So, you can easily create different author card types easily within your WordPress website.
Dedicated Individual Author Personalization
If all these WP Author Box features excites you, there’s one more card you haven’t seen yet; the Shortcodes.
Yes, the plugin also allows you to display authors using shortcodes. This feature allows you to display author cards on any page and at any location. It also supports other page builders and themes, making it a powerful backup plan.
So, you can find the shortcode instructions under the WP Author Box dashboard. There are instructions for making a dedicated Author’s page or team page as well.
To create a team page, all you need to do is paste this shortcode
inside your landing page.
And done! Your team page is ready just like that. Now users will be able to view all the authors inside that archive page, as well as navigate to their profiles.
In the same way, you can display specific authors and guest authors with shortcode. (change the number following the author id).
And that’s everything about the WP Author Box plugin, your favorite author management toolkit.
Wrapping Up
Did you find all the benefits of WP Author Box plugin today?
Now all that’s left is to install the plugin and start personalizing your author cards. Please feel free to refer to this article to let your friends and family get the benefits as well.
WP Author Box automatically creates manageable user profiles inside your WordPress users dashboard. But none of these user profiles have access to your website, unless you give them personally from the users dashboard. So there will absolutely be no security concerns.
As many as you want. WP Author Box plugin does not limit your ability based on any numbers.
This plugin is getting improved by the minutes. So you can hope for more amazing stuff on each major update.