Multi-Author Blogs are a popular trend that is spreading rapidly in the blogging industry. It is getting hard to keep up with the fresh content for one man bloggers therefore more and more blogs are now seeking for guest authors, co-authors, and multi-authors. This is not only a great way to expand your blog’s content, but it is a great way to attract different type of audiences. While it is a great way to produce fresh content, Managing a Multi-Author blog is no easy task. You have to make sure that the authors post on time, they have the appropriate permissions and control, and so much more. Thankfully WordPress allows us to manage a multi-author blog efficiently with the help of these amazing plugins that we will highlight in this post.
1. Role Manager
WordPress Version 2.0 introduces the concept of Roles. Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. This Plugin allows you to define and manage multiple subscriber profiles – called Roles and their Capabilities. Also you can create new Roles and Capabilities.
2. Co-Authors
When you have a blog that is being run by multiple authors, there are times that more than one person contribute to an article. One way of displaying that is when you show something like we do by claiming post is written by Editorial Staff. Another way of going about this is showing co-authors and linking to their profile individually. Co-Author Plugin lets you do just that.
3. Author Exposed
Author Exposed is a simple WordPress plugin that allows your visitors easy and elegant way to see more details about the post author. This plugin does the same thing as the_author() tag only this time it’s linked to hidden layer (div). By clicking on the author link the layer pop’s up with author info gathered from the profile page, plus gravatar photo, if author email is assigned with one.
4. Userextra
On Blogs that have multiple authors, it is wise to assign authors to specific categories to avoid confusion. This plugin limits the user to publishing into the categories he/she is assigned.
5. Author Advertising Plugin
This plugin allows blog admins to create a revenue sharing program utilising one of the many advertising programs out there i.e Yahoo, Google Adsense, Amazon, Allposters etc. Admin has complete control over:
- The percentage of author adverts to admin adverts.
- The user level that an author has to be before they get to participate in the revenue sharing program.
- Whether to randomise author ads on the front page of the blog.
6. Pre-Publish Post Reminder
Always forget to insert your signature, thumbnail or maybe a category image? Or need a place to store your code where you can conveniently copy and paste into your post? Need to leave a note for co-authors? This is what this plugin is for – a handy reminder list on your Post Admin page. Go through the list before confidently pressing the Publish button. Now you only need to remind yourself to read the Reminder list.
7. Hide Dashboard
This plugin lets you hide dashboard features from some users. The title just say it all.
8. Post Avatar
This plugin simplifies including a picture when writing posts by allowing the user to choose from a predefined list of images. The image can be automatically shown on the page or output customized with the use of a template tag in themes.
9. User Photo
Allows a user to associate a profile photo with their account through their “Your Profile” page. Admins may add a user profile photo by accessing the “Edit User” page. Uploaded images are resized to fit the dimensions specified on the options page; a thumbnail image correspondingly is also generated. User photos may be displayed within a post or a comment to help identify the author.
10. Post By Author
This plugin will show the last X posts by the current author either at the bottom of every post, or where you manually specify in each post. Using the built-in options page, you can choose the number of posts to show, set the header text, choose to show the post dates, select the format of the date, and choose whether or not to include the current post in the list.
11. List Authors Widget
This plugin display a list of authors in your WordPress Sidebar Widgets linking to the authors.php page.
12. Quick Notes on WP Dashboard
If you blog with multiple persons, you can leave a message for the others. In the plugin file, you can determine, what capabilities a user must have to read the notes, and what capabilities he must have to write/modify them. By default, Authors and higher can write, and every registered user can read.
13. Post Reminder
Posts reminder notifies you when you forget to write a post on the current day. It notifies you at 22:00 to the email you specifiy on the options page.
14. Send Private Email
This plugin lets you send email to all registered users to your blog, you can change it to editors or which role if you choose. To prevent abuse this powerful mass mailing functionality is available only to users with Administrator role. This can be changed quite easily if need be, for instance to allow all Editors or greater to use the plugin.
*You must Email the Author to obtain a copy of this plugin.
15. Our Todo List
A simple todo list plugin to share ideas/todos with blog members. All members work together to manage the todo list under “Manage” section in WordPress administration interface.
16. Report Posts
Adds the ability for your users to report a post as innappropriate or incorrect. Reported posts then appear in the manage section of the admin console. Add the link to report the post by calling report_post_link(). Edit the report_posts-popup.php to put the desired text in the popup window.
17. Author Comment WordPress Plugin
This plugin is like Author Highlight. It requires authors to login, but when they make a comment it is posted with custom styles.
18. Audit Trail
Audit Trail is a plugin to keep track of what is going on inside your blog. It does this by recording certain actions (such as who logged in and when) and storing this information in the form of a log. Not only that but it records the full contents of posts (and pages) and allows you to restore a post to a previous version at any time.
19. Future Posts Calendar Plugin
This plugin adds a simple month-by-month calendar that shows all the months you have future posts for (and the current month no matter what), it highlights the days you have posts for, and as an added bonus if you click a day the Post Timestamp boxes change to that day, month and year.
20. Get Author Profile
Get Author Profile is a pretty basic WordPress plugin that lets you manually access an author’s (i.e. user’s) profile. The main purpose is to let you provide author information outside The Loop, such as for a sidebar intro of the blog owner or to list contributors to your blog.
21. WordPress Gravatar Plugin for Authors
WordPress plugin that allows you to display author Gravatar in the post written by that specific author.
If you have any more recommendations please feel free to suggest those in the comments.