How to Set Up a Multi-Author WordPress Blog (In 4 Simple Steps)

These days, it’s nearly impossible for a single-person operation to keep up
with the pace that users expect from authoritative blogs. The best way to stay
competitive is to set up a multi-author WordPress blog of your own.
A multi-author WordPress blog enables you to add more writers to your ranks,
and upgrade your editorial calendar. Depending on how many authors you
have, you could even publish content daily.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of setting up a multi-author
WordPress blog, including defining roles, creating author biographies, and
even adding multi-author widgets. We have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s
get started!

Set up a multi-author WordPress blog in 4 steps:

Step 1: Add new authors to your WordPress site

The first step in our quest to create a multi-author WordPress blog is the simplest
– WordPress enables you to add new users in a matter of minutes
through your dashboard. All you have to do is go to Users > Add New and fill
the form that appears there:
Most of the fields are straightforward. Choose a username, enter your author’s
email, first name, last name, and create a secure password for them.

Step 2: Define your authors’ WordPress roles

At the end of the user creation screen, there’s a drop-down list where you can
choose their WordPress roles:
WordPress ships with several user roles, which most people never use. As far
as adding new authors goes, we only care about two:

1. Author: As its name implies, users with this role have permission to
   write, edit, publish, and even delete their own articles (but not
   others’). They can also upload accompanying media files.
2. Contributor: The contributor role is very similar to that of an
   author, but with fewer powers. They can write and publish their own
   posts, but can’t delete or edit them once they go live.

While the distinction above may seem unimportant, it can make all the difference
when it comes to a multi-author WordPress blog.

It boils down to a matter of permissions. Authors have the potential to mess
with your published content, by removing or editing their own posts without
your permission. Contributors, on the other hand, can’t edit or delete posts
once they’re live. For this reason, we recommend that instead of choosing
the Author role, you stick with the Contributor status for your new writers.
That suggestion assumes that you want to maintain editorial control over your
site. If you’re happy to give your writers permission to edit or delete their own
posts after they are published, then feel free to add them as Authors.

Step 3: Create stylish author biographies

At this point, you should’ve already added multiple authors to your site and
defined their roles according to our suggestions. As things stand, you’ve
already set up a multi-author WordPress blog; all that’s left to do is to add
some bells and whistles.
Biographies usually appear as small sections at the beginning or end of each
article and show a few lines of information about their respective authors.
An example of an author biography.
Biographies can also include links to the author’s social media accounts.

Step 4: Display a list of your authors

This last step will enable you to display a list of your entire roster of writers
using a simple WordPress widget. That way, visitors can easily move between
the posts written by each one of them.

You may also choose to display additional information besides names on your
widget, but we recommend against it to keep things lean.

Conclusion

Setting up a multi-author WordPress blog is remarkably simple. Adding more
writers to your roster will enable you to increase your editorial pace far more
that you could accomplish alone.