Inviting other bloggers and writers to become co-authors is one great way to expand one’s blog. Assuming the recruiting of writers part is being taken care of, the next big problem you could be facing is management. Managing multiple authors for a blog is never an easy task. It’s often a challenge to keep co-authors in control, getting them to write quality content on schedule, making sure they did not miss anything before hitting the publish button, etc. Also sometimes you might also want to give different authors different level of accessibilities and controls, depending on their performances.
Luckily there are lots of Wordpress plugins and resources out there to help owners and administrators to manage co-authors. If you are planning to turn your blog into a multi-author blog, here’s 35 Tips Tricks To Manage and Handle Multi-Author Blogs you might want to check out.
More Wordpress related blog post:
- Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks – Part I
- Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks – Part II
- more..
Full list after jump.
Managing Blog Posts
If you have more than 5 authors on a particular blog, managing the daily published entries can be tedious especially when rules and checklists are not properly laid out. Even if they are, they might not be followed at the times. Dealing with situations like this, some plugins could be your life-savers, or at least making blog postings more efficient.
- Future Posts Calendar
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. Pretty handy to organize and plan blog post for a multi authors blog. Also comes in form of widget.
- Pre-Publish Reminder
A friendly checklist for you and your co-authors before they hit the publish button to place any blog article live on the main page.
Similar plugins: Pre-Publish Reminders by Nick Ohrn, Category Remindr for those who forget inserting categories.
- Draft Notification
This WordPress plugin automatically emails the admin when a new draft is saved. The email contains the post’s title, the author, and a link. There is no options page currently, because there is really nothing to configure. The plugin now supports the new ‘pending’ status.
Similar Plugins: Draft Notifier
- Co-Authors
Allows multiple authors to be associated with a post. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s posts page and feed. Additionally, co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is usual).
Similar Plugins: Multi Authors
- Audit Trail Plugin
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.
- Report Posts
This allows your user to report any post they find not appropriate. Think of it as seeking users help on quality control. Reported posts then appear in the manage section of the admin console.
- Gravatar plugin For Multiple Authors
Wordpress plugin that provides multi users to show their respective gravatars on their authored posts.
Managing Multi Authors
Sometimes you might want to give some authors a higher access over the others. By that we mean giving them the access to publish content without your moderation or perhaps access to sensitive areas you won’t share with the rest. These following plugins allow you to administrate your fellow authors the way you prefer.
- Role Manager
Reworked from the previous version of Role Manager Plugin is written by David House and Owen Winkler. This plugin allows you to control roles and access for different authors on your blog.
Similar plugins: Role Scoper
- Draft Control
The WordPress Plugin "Draft Control" allows users above level 5 to view drafts in a nice row paging system.
- Hide Dashboard
A pretty self-explanatory plugin. The reason why you would need this is when you have multiple authors on your blog and you want to hide (or customize) the dashboards.
- WP-Group Restriction
Wp-group-restriction is a Wordpress plugin that enhances the current user role feature, by allowing administrators to manage access to content (i.e., pages).
- Adminimize
The plugin changes the administration backend and gives you the power to assign rights on certain parts. Admins can activate/deactivate every part of the menu and even parts of the submenu.
Authors Profiles
When co-authors write for your blog, the least you can do (if there’s no revenue sharing involved) is to publish a decent author’s profile as token of appreciation. Proper credits on authors are important, it shows how much you appreciate their work. Here are some plugins to place a decent Author’s Profile on blog post, or anywhere in the blog.
- Post Avatar
Simplifies the process of including a picture when writing posts. Authors simply choose from a predefined list of images in the Write Post page to display an image in a post. A template tag displays the image with
The Loop. - User Photo
Allows you to associate authors’ profile photos with their account under Your Profile , or any other pages with the use of tags like
userphoto_the_author_photo(),userphoto_the_author_thumbnail()etc.
- Posts by Author Plugin
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.
- Get Author Profile
Allows you to access an author’s profile manually outside
The Loop, such as for a sidebar intro of the blog owner or to list contributors to your blog. - Userextra
This plugin basically does two things. It adds the ability to associate extra information to users, and supports category access control where users are being control on which category they are allow to access and post article to.
- Author Exposed
Simple Wordpress plugin that allows your visitors easy and elegant way to see more details about the post author.
- List Author Widget
Display a list of authors in your WordPress Sidebar Widgets linking to the authors.php page.
- Blog Matrix Wordpress Plugin
This plugin provides a suite of extended WordPress sidebar, navigation and blog info template tags that can be filtered by author and category.
- Author Comments
Highlights author’s comments with customizable styles. Requires author to login.
Communication
Communication is perhaps the utmost important factor in any successful multi-author blogs. Not only it promotes sharing of ideas, getting each other mutually inspired, it also help prevent having 2 authors clasing on writing the same (or similar) blog topics.
- Share Notes on 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.
- Our Todo List
A plugin allowing authors to get together to share ideas and tasks with a managable section in Wordpress administration section.
- Send Private Email
Allowing blog owners to send private emails to authors and users.
Similar plugins: Email Users
-
Multi Author Comment Notification
Plugin that sends comment notification to not only the specific author of the post, but to other authors of the blog as well. Customisable via admin panel.
Revenue Sharing
Last but not least – the moolah factor, the thing that drives and motivates (most) co-authors. Here are some plugins to make revenue sharing fair and square, or at least automated.
- Author Advertising
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. It can also be used as a banner manager, author photo/website widgets.
Similar plugins: AdSense Revenue Sharing
Further Readings
- Wordpress: Roles and Capabilities
Indepth explanation on how blog owner can control the ability of assigning roles to a user.
- Wordpress: Author Templates
This article explains how to change what happens when the blog viewer is visiting one of your site’s author pages.
- Creating an "About this Author" for Multiple Authors
How to insert About this Author at the end of every blog post.
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Posted by hongkiat in Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin, Wordpress Tips Tricks , at 11.10.08
Tags: access control, management, multi-authors, plugin, tips, tricks, writers |
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Comments
AnggaRifandi November 10th, 2008
I really need to manage multiple-author in my school blog. and HK make it more easily with this cool list … thanks
Replykaitor November 10th, 2008
do you have any idea how to manage and handle multiple author for blogspot.
ReplyTschai November 10th, 2008
That’s a lot of great tips.
For a humble corporate blog like our Blogging About Oracle Applications with 9 authors all these plugins and managin’ them would be counterproductive…in our case.
But it’s great to know that for pro-bloggers so much options are available.
ReplyCedrick Reese November 11th, 2008
This is a great post! I am in the process of creating a multi author blog and this information was very helpful in making a decision of what plugins to choose.
ReplyDainis Graveris November 11th, 2008
really good article, I think this will become handy after some time – thanks for compiling :)
ReplyAbhishek November 11th, 2008
It is really great article for wordpress users. I am also a user of wordpress and needed to the information. I was still not aware about this type of plug in. I am really interested to learn this very steadily.
Thanks
Replyhttp://seoandwebdesignblog.wordpress.com/
Ralph Woods November 11th, 2008
Wow, you just gotta love that multi author blogging!
Jess
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Brian November 11th, 2008
My site is just now moving into the multi-author stage, so perfect timing.
Replydev(devSoft.Mobi) November 11th, 2008
Really good tip and trick, maybe i also create one multiple-author blog
ReplyTV Guide November 11th, 2008
Thanks, very timely article for me. Lots of welcome detail.
Replyalez November 11th, 2008
really good article, I think this will become handy after some time – thanks for compiling :)
ReplyStuart Foster November 12th, 2008
Great advice…and really really timely. I’ve started a blog/business recently with some colleagues and have been on the look out for an easy way to coordinate posts, organize thoughts and collaborate in an effective manner. Thanks :)
ReplyTracy November 12th, 2008
Thanks for the great article, I had no idea there were so many plug ins and management tools available.
ReplyGanesh November 12th, 2008
Awesome plugins. I didn’t even know they existed. If all of them are used, it would contribute to the perfect functioning of a multi-author blog. Thanks a lot.
ReplyJoseph November 12th, 2008
I’ve been using this plugin in my blog for communicating with other editors inside WordPress and it works pretty well: http://bitsignals.com/2008/01/14/admin-msg-board/#amsgboardenglish
ReplySlamBlogger November 12th, 2008
Very nice list. Couldn’t have caught it at a better time, with my next project coming up soon (a multi-author magazine). Thanks!
Replyafas November 12th, 2008
ehm..i guesss i will give a try. I have many blog need to write and handle wisely.
ReplyPlanet Malaysia November 12th, 2008
So far, I don’t have much author yet but I wish i can have more than 5 authors for single blog.
Replygoblogging November 12th, 2008
Very useful article! :) I am not using multiple author yet, but I have plan to use multiple author. this article helped me to manage many author on my blog. Keep up the good work!
ReplyPat November 12th, 2008
Great article, which gives a lot of food for thought in setting up my multi author blog. I especially like the “To-do” list plug-in.
ReplyMichelle at Scribbit November 13th, 2008
This is great but my question is how many of these also apply to Wordpress Multiple User? Can they be used with that system as well?
Replypiculous November 13th, 2008
never thought that there’s so much plugins for multi-author blogs..
Replygood work.
Rahul November 13th, 2008
Thanks for this information. Really useful for our site as well, cause’ we’re also a social blog.
Also, agree with @ piculous, since we did not have idea that there were this many great plugins.
Cheers.
Replydev(devSoft.Mobi) November 13th, 2008
Hongkiat this “35 Tips Tricks To Manage and Handle Multi-Author Blogs ” have been link by problogger~
ReplyPierre November 13th, 2008
Really useful
ReplyAdi November 13th, 2008
Wow, this blog is realy cool. Lot of useful stuff wiyh great look.
Salute!!
Adi
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shalu wasu November 14th, 2008
I (and the other authors) just find it easier to work in the old fashioned way – authors mail in the article, i edit and post. everyone is happy!
Replyzoolo BOY November 14th, 2008
Yes I’m agree with you shalu wasu!
Replytips paradise November 15th, 2008
My oh my , this is the longest one I found today on tips. i am looking for some like what you have here to put in my blog today but I guess I’m not that techie to understand everything you got here.
Makes me feel happy though that I am the only author of my blog.
ReplyFenton November 16th, 2008
Great listing. Anyhow, it does not apply to me. Just want to congratulate you that problogger has featured this great darn post!
ReplyLaura November 18th, 2008
Great list. I am really grateful for one of the plugins in this list. I was looking exactly for something like that. Thanks.
ReplyBuz November 19th, 2008
Great stuff! Thank you for all the detailed steps for Managing Multi Authors using WordPress…!
ReplyYong How November 20th, 2008
cool tips. Thanks for the details! :D
Replymatteo November 21st, 2008
Thank you for your inspiring article. Please have a look at my “Notify author about publishing of his posts by administrator” Wordpress plugin, might be useful to add to the list.
Very useful for multi author blogs.
Plugin URL
Replyhttp://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/notify-authors-plugin/
Jiao NANG December 15th, 2008
Very very great.
ReplyThanks.
Jiao NANG.
Jonathan Concepcion December 22nd, 2008
Thanks this post is great!
ReplyThom December 29th, 2008
What a great set of tips. Thank you so much for compiling it.
ReplyRamil January 3rd, 2009
Is there a plugin that limit the number of post the author can have in one day? For example, I would like to limit AuthorXXX to be able to post one entry only in one day.
Also, is there a plugin or widget that will display the authors in the sidebar?
ReplyHafiz Affan Ahmed January 24th, 2009
fantastic
ReplyDirk January 29th, 2009
Another plugin hint: mailto:staff mailto links on the dashboard referring to all user groups of the blog. Quite handy way of internal staff communication if you don’t want to set up an internal messaging system or even a mailing list.
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ReplyLukti March 2nd, 2009
One thing i noticed in my blog network is that sometimes my editors forget to write a post on sundays or saturdays. I wrote a plugin to notify my users to write a post this day.
Check it out: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posts-reminder/
Regards.
Replymcloft March 6th, 2009
great list. thanks.
ReplyCarol March 12th, 2009
Draft Control is a very nice plug-in but it doesn’t work on WP 2.3 or greater.
ReplyMarvin Lee April 13th, 2009
Is there any plugin you know of that can have two columns for only two authors of a single wordpress blog?
ReplyTheAnand April 27th, 2009
Really usefull stuff, thanks a ton! I usually keep finding you the search results, but this time I am adding you to my reader. :) Loved posts by author and author exposed the most! Thanks!!!
ReplySunday May 4th, 2009
Good article.
ReplyBut which one do you advise for me to use.
The plugin are numerous that I am confuse as to the best to use.
Thank you.
Nikola Ovcharski June 9th, 2009
Thank you! This list is awesome
ReplyChandra Wijaya June 17th, 2009
its a great tips.. thanks for sharing..
ReplyJack June 30th, 2009
Great tips
ReplyReally useful
Thanks for share
rohan July 10th, 2009
nice article. I have subscribed for your rss feeds now :)
Replyhermanus August 31st, 2009
nice info. thanks
ReplyNeal Harmon September 2nd, 2009
I discovered both that the Blog Matrix Plugin link is no longer active as well as the fact that it doesn’t work for wordpress 2.3 and greater. After some searching, I discovered this plugin that replaces the Author Categories functionality…
http://www.makesites.cc/programming/by-makis/wp_author_categories-v1_0/
Thank you Makis!
ReplySean September 3rd, 2009
Thank you for this post!
Just what I was looking for!
ReplyDivyang September 7th, 2009
Hi,
On my blog, I don’t want to show Admin in authours page. But stiil its showing, though admin has not written a single post ( Admin has written posts, but Now I have changed it to some other author’s name). I am using Theme Hybrid framework.
Thanks.
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ReplyAlex Kessaris September 25th, 2009
Thank you very much for the informative post.
One thing I was hoping you would touch on is the ability of post authors to moderate only their own posts and comments in the admin area.
As it is now, all authors see all comments and all posts in the back end. This is a strange behaviour because they can’t easily find their own for editing.
It would be helpful if in the admin area authors would only see their own posts, unless they were given a user role that allowed them to view and edit others’ posts and comments.
ReplyScrape October 6th, 2009
supereb nice job. woderfull aticle. good tips and ticks i am some thinks learn .. its very help full for me… thanks admin.
ReplyMarfi October 7th, 2009
Very useful 10x!
ReplyEnigma October 14th, 2009
First off, great post.
Now a question..
I need to “automatically” promote users from a role to an another (ex. from contributor to author) when he/she has at least a certain number of published content.
Is there a plugin for that? Does Anybody know?
Thank you in advance
ReplyNorfolk wedding Photographers October 27th, 2009
Thankyou – Some really useful information on how to tackle a complex subject
Thanks
ReplyMike November 3rd, 2009
Great tools, it’s always a pain to handle multiple authors, especially on the web!
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Replyworcestershire wedding photographers January 9th, 2010
some great tools here and bril info – thanks for posting and sharing.
ReplyVaibhav Dugar January 12th, 2010
i am just starting a blog that will have multiple writers.. this post has really helped me.
thanks for the list.
cheers
ReplyBen Stokes January 14th, 2010
Useful blog – great plug ins – many thanks
Replylinks london January 21st, 2010
i am just starting a blog that will have multiple writers.. this post has really helped me.
Replymand January 22nd, 2010
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
ReplyNitin January 25th, 2010
Can anybody please tell me how I can count co-authors page load?
ReplyA.P. Scanner February 5th, 2010
An exhaustive list of useful information for multi-author site owners. I’m currently designing one and I’m finding these plugins really useful. The Role Manager especially is a must-have for multi-author blogs.
ReplyMarlin February 13th, 2010
Thanks for this great information. I was looking for something like this to make wordpress an article directory where authors can post articles.
ReplyFlorian March 10th, 2010
Great list. Thank you! I booked more than half of it! But what about Twitter? There are Plugins out there to show information about the author e.g. per post or per page. But how to show not only static informations about the author or the author’s avatar picture, but also his last 3-10 tweets? Where is the plugin that fits in that niche?
Replymichael March 19th, 2010
Thank your for such an useful article share with us i just understand how to manage the difficulties of blogging.
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