Creating a Multi-Author Website with WordPress
Recently, I created a website for a small professional association of EFT practioners (EFT as in Emotional Freedom Techniques). They wanted a website where they could easily enter their professional information and contact details, and of course, where potential clients could find them.
I decided that WordPress would best fit this brief, as it is so easy, even for newbies, to enter information. But this was my first multi-author WordPress install, and it took some experimenting to find the most suitable plugins, so I thought I’d share them here.
First of all, I had to create an author page template. I copied the archve.php, renamed the copy author.php, and then modified it, after taking a look at this article: Creating Author Pages. With a couple of minor modifications, I had the author’s profile description showing up at the top of each author page.
I installed WordPress Rich Text Biography so that each author’s profile could include a photo and a link back to their website, and Signature Manager so that they could have a signature at the end of every post, again, with a photo and link, if needed.
To make inserting the photo slightly easier, I installed the Classic Image Button plugin. Even so, I’ll probably be the one installing their photos for them!
I wanted to make it easier for readers to find more articles by the same author, so I installed the Posts By Author plugin, which lists (suprise surprise!) other posts by the same author, at the end of each post.
I was concerned that newbies find the full WordPress admin confusing. I tested Adminimize, and found it did an excellent job of restricting the authors admin view to only the essential items, without slowing down the load time of the admin pages. The author’s admin area was looking less cluttered and easier already.
I didn’t want anyone to accidentally change someone else’s posts, so I installed Manage Your Posts Only. And I know newbies can be worried by the WordPress update message, so I also installed No Update Nag.
I wanted to have a list of author pages in the sidebar. But none of the author widgets that I found would link to author pages not yet associated with any posts. So I used the standard text widget to enter links to all of the author pages - not a major problem, given that this is likely to remain a very small association, but I’d hate to have to do that for a large one!
I used Clean WP Dashboard to remove unwanted clutter from the dashboard, and added the Dashboard Info plugin, for admin messages to the authors. I also wrote a page of basic intructions, and installed it with the WP Instructions plugin.
Finally, I needed a simple way for the authors to login, without too much confusing clutter, so I installed the Customize Meta Widget plugin in the footer.
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