7 Best Free Author Bio Box Plugins for WordPress
People like to connect with other people and learn more about them. That’s why you see author bio box on most popular blogs, even on blogs written by a single author. Adding an author bio box allows users to associate content with an actual person. It also helps them learn more about those authors by visiting their websites or following them on social media. In this article, we will show you 7 best free author bio box plugins for WordPress.
Getting Started
Before you start displaying author info box on your WordPress site, you need to know how WordPress handles user profiles.
If you are an administrator, then you will edit your user information by visiting Users » Your Profile page. Other users will see a profile link in their WordPress admin bar.
On the profile screen, you can change your display name among other WordPress settings. You can also add useful information about yourself. Most plugins in this list will add additional fields on the profile screen which you can use to provide more information about yourself. This could be links to your social media profile, link to your company website, etc.
More adventurous users can learn how to manually add an author info box in WordPress and even add additional fields to user profiles in WordPress. However, for beginners it would be more convenient to use a plugin.
1. Simple Author Box
As the name suggests, Simple Author Box tries to simplify the process of adding an author bio box to your WordPress posts. Upon activation, the plugin adds social profile fields in user’s profile. Each author on your site can fill in this information to show social icons along with their author bio. You can choose colors, fonts, style, and author photo style from the plugin’s settings page.
2. WP About Author
This plugin also comes with a simple settings page. It allows you to choose Author photo style, add social profiles, and even lets you display author bio box on archive, front page, and in RSS feeds. Another thing we noticed is that it works with Simple Local Avatars Plugin.
3. Fancier Author Box
Fancier author box not only shows an author bio box with social buttons, it also shows the latest post by the author as a separate tab. The plugin settings page gives you full control over the appearance of your author bio box. Another great feature of this plugin is the ability to disable author bio box on user profiles. This allows authors to turn off author bio section on their posts.
4. Sexy Author Bio
Sexy Author Bio is a beautiful author bio box plugin with flat social media icons. By default it uses larger font size for author name which looks bold and nice. You can adjust font and avatar size, border, background, and link colors from the plugin’s settings page.
5. Co-Author Plus
On multi-author blogs and magazine sites, sometimes multiple authors contribute to an article. By default, you can not credit multiple authors on a post. Co-Author Plus allows you to add credit for multiple authors and contributors for a post on your WordPress site. However, the plugin does not come with an author info box. In order to display multiple authors with their own author info boxes, you will have to modify your theme files and Co-Author Plus templates tags. See our guide how to credit multiple authors in WordPress.
6. Author Bio Box
If you are looking for a simpler author box plugin, then Author Bio Box is for you. It comes with all the basic options you will need from an author bio box plugin. You can configure colors, add social profiles, adjust gravatar size. It is very straight forward and simple to use.
7. Author Box Ultimate
Author Box Ultimate comes with multiple predefined themes with different background images. This allows you to try different combination and styles to see what looks best with your website.
The plugin’s settings page is divided into different sections. First you will need to click on the Content tab and enable it for posts and pages otherwise you will probably keep wondering why the author box is not appearing on your site.
We hope this article helped you find the best author bio box plugin for your WordPress blog. Author bio box is a great way to attract guest contributors and give them credit.
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