How to have multiple blog authors in WordPress

Want your posts to come from multiple blog authors in WordPress? Great! Here’s how to make it happen…

Go into your WordPress dashboard > Users section.

Add the person’s name and email, and where it says “role,” select either contributor or author. Here’s the difference…

Do you want to post for people?

And have their author name attached to it (so it looks like they’ve posted it themselves)? Make them a “contributor.”

If you want to be the one posting the content (or have your VA do it for you), while giving it another author’s name, this is the route for you. Someone with a contributor role can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.

Once you add a contributor, then you can edit a blog post and make them the author of the post.

Do you want people to post themselves?

Make them an “author.”

This gives them the ability to go into your WordPress account—with their own login credentials—and publish/manage their own posts.

How do you add a bio for each author so that it shows up in each of their posts?

This also happens in the Users section. Select the user’s profile. In the Biographical Info section, add their bio. This means you won’t need to add the bio manually to each post, and when you update the person’s bio here—it will dynamically update on all previous posts.

What if I’m the only author on my blog?

It’s still a good idea to have an author biography, even if you’re the only author. Why? Because in doing this, you’re demonstrating authority to Google. It’s also another place to include important keywords for what you do, like WordPress designer for me! Plus, visitors might land on a blog post as their first interaction with you; tell them who you are!

How do you add profile pictures for multiple blog authors?

For yourself: In your user profile, you’ll see a section for profile picture. Here, you’ll be directed to set up a profile on Gravatar.com.

For your contributors/authors: Direct them to create their own Gravatar profiles, where they will add their own email address and photo. It’s best to let your contributors and authors do this themselves so they have the ability to update them.

Gravatar.com is a free WordPress.com service, and you’ll need to create a separate login (which is different from your WordPress site login) to use it. In Gravatar, enter your email address and upload your photo. This photo is then assigned to this specific email address across WordPress. You only have to update this photo on Gravatar.com and will dynamically update everywhere. This is especially helpful if you post in more than one place.

What author archives for multiple blog authors?

If you do have multiple authors on your site, then your site can populate an author archive, which is great for SEO. (If you use Yoast SEO, you’ll need to enable author archive pages.)

Troubleshooting

If you do all of this, and aren’t seeing the profiles or pictures or multiple authors on WordPress, you might have to do some tweaking in your settings or theme. But don’t worry! If you’re in my WordPress website maintenance program, I’ll help you.