Content is king. We all know that, right? Having multiple writers to write content for your blog is a great way to have more content. More writers provide you with more content and therefore, more traffic and revenue for your site.
While it is easy to hire more writers, it is not that easy to manage a multi-author blog. Unlike the single author blogs, multi-author blogs have some special demands and requirements. Since WordPress does not come with any special features for managing multi-author blogs, you need third-party plugins for having those features.
In today’s post, I will introduce you to the 9 best WordPress plugins for managing multi-author blogs. Continue reading to find out which they are.
Having an editorial calendar is a must for any multi-author blog. Actually, it could be useful for single author blogs too. An ideal editorial calendar will provide you with an overview of all the posts and titles as an attractive presentation. Unluckily, WordPress does not come with any such system. That is where the Editorial Calendar comes handy. This powerful plugin lets you drag and drop posts to different dates, edit post title, content, time, publish posts right from the calendar.
Edit Flow is a very powerful WordPress plugin to enhance your editing workflow by providing different features and options. By using these features, you can easily collaborate and manage your editorial team right from the dashboard. Besides the traditional calendar view, blog posts could have custom statuses like Pitch, Assigned, In Progress, Needs Edit etc. You can leave editorial comments or metadata for the authors. By enabling notifications, you can keep track of the content updates. It is also possible to create user groups for better user management.
Multi-authors blogs often publish stories which have multiple contributors. But the default WordPress options does not allow multiple authors per post. If you need to provide multiple bylines to your posts, pages or any other content, Co-Authors Plus could be an excellent choice for you. You can add multiple authors by typing their name in the input box. The bylines will appear in both the archive and regular blog pages. The plugin allows you to add bylines by creating guest author profiles too.
If you are looking for a simple solution to upload custom avatar for your multi-author blog, Simple Local Avatars should be one of your top choices. Despite not being updated for more than 2 years, the plugin still does its job perfectly. Once you install and activate the plugin, it will create a new field titled ‘Avatar’ in the profile editor page. The uploaded avatars could be resized too. Additionally, you can choose which types of users can upload their own avatars.
Displaying an author avatars list could be a very useful feature for multi-author blogs. Like most other custom features, WordPress does not have any native solution for this either. If you want to display an author avatars list, you will find this plugin handy. By using the plugin’s shortcode, you can display the avatars list in the sidebar or any other place you want. You can choose the number of users to display, the sort order, avatar size, showing user name etc.
When you have multiple authors and/or users in your blog, it is very important to restrict access to the dashboard options for them. Adminimize lets you do that for your multi-author blogs. By using the plugin, you can remove unnecessary items from the dashboard and make it more straightforward for general users. The admin options could be set for a specific role or a specific user. Besides the admin menus, you can control the sub-menus too. It is also possible to import and/or export the plugin settings to and from other WordPress sites.
Capability Manager Enhanced is another useful plugin for any multi-author blog. This unique plugin lets you customize the capabilities of various user roles like subscriber, editor, author etc. Besides editing the existing capabilities for each role, you can add new capabilities to any role. It is also possible to copy capabilities from one role to another. And if you want, you can set a role’s capabilities as the default capabilities for the future registrations. Besides the regular English version, the plugin is also available in several other languages.
While the WordPress dashboard provides access to lots of powerful options and features, not all people are comfortable with the dashboard. If you want to provide a simple solution for such users in your multi-author blog, WP User Frontend could be an excellent choice for you. This plugin lets the users to create, edit and publish new posts right from the frontend. It is also possible to add attachments to the posts. The users can edit their profile from the frontend. There is a premium version of the plugin too.
Most blog posts go through a series of revisions before they are finally published. While managing the revisions is not that hard for a single author blog, it is not the case for multi-author blogs. For such blogs, you need a powerful revision management system. Revisionary lets you do that in your WordPress site. By using this plugin, you can allow the authors to revise their content and submit for approval. Once approved by an editor, the changes could be applied to the post.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it. These were the 9 best WordPress plugins for managing multi-author blogs. Do you use any of them in your website? If yes, please share your experience with us. And if you think I have missed any essential plugin for managing multi-author blogs, let me know the name by leaving a comment below.