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Top Free WordPress Author Box Plugins

Last Updated on September 8, 2024 · 9 Comments on Top Free WordPress Author Box Plugins
Best WordPress Author Box Plugins

One common but often overlooked feature on many WordPress websites is the author’s bio box. Usually found at the end of the blog post, the author box boosts the likability, hence the credibility and legitimacy of your website.

Your readers can learn more about you or your authors at a glance. Besides, you can grow your social media influence and show social proof by including links to your accounts in the author box. And these are just two use cases.

In other words, the author’s bio box, just like the comment box, is another fab way of engaging your visitors. That’s why it’s sad many people neglect the author’s box, more so when we have many WordPress author box plugins to make the job extremely easy.

In today’s post, we’ll be covering mainly free author box plugins for WordPress. We hope you find the perfect solution for your specific needs. Please share your favorite WordPress author box plugin in the comments.

Without further ado, let us get down to work.

Whether you choose a simple or fancy author box plugin, the plugins you find here get the job done. Your choice will, therefore, boil down to your personal preferences and specific needs. Also, remember to test your author box in mobile devices to check if everything looks great and working smoothly.

That being said, lets look at the best WordPress author box plugins.

1. Simple Author Box

simple author box WordPress plugin banner

First in the line up is Simple Author Box, a brilliant and easy to use WordPress author box plugin by WebFactory Ltd. The plugin adds a responsive author box at the end of your posts. It allows you to display the author’s name, avatar, description, and social media profiles.

You can fully customize the plugin styles to match your theme for a stylish and uniform look. Simple Author Box inserts the author box to your posts automatically. Alternatively, you can add the author box manually into your template files. It supports RTL and AMP, integrates with Gravatar, and uses GDPR friendly Bunny Fonts.

2. WP Post Author

WP Post Author WordPress plugin banner

If you’re in the market for a multi-faceted WordPress author box plugin, you can’t go wrong with WP Post Author. The brainchild of AF Themes, WP Post Author offers you a wide range of options, including an author bio, social icons, shortcodes, and so on.

In other words, the plugin helps you to display the author’s name, avatar, role, email address, social profiles, and a short bio under the post. You can choose to show/hide specific author content, depending on your needs. On top of that, the plugin comes with widgets that allow you to add author boxes in sidebars and other widget areas.

3. Starbox – the Author Box for Humans

Starbox WordPress plugin banner

Are you looking to create gorgeous author bio boxes that persuade readers to click through and read more about you or your authors? If so, you will love Starbox by the great guys over at Squirrly UK. The plugin comes with a nice set of features to create beautiful author boxes that work.

To get you up and running quickly, Starbox comes with pre-made themes that make creating an author box a breeze. On top of that, you can place the author box at the top or bottom of your posts. Additionally, the plugin comes with social profiles, Google & Facebook authorship, rich snippets for Google search results, links to the author’s posts, author job title, and so much more.

4. (Simply) Guest Author Name

(Simply) Guest Author Name

If you work with a lot of guest posts, you will find the Guest Author Name plugin quite useful. When guest authors submit posts, they are usually under review until you choose to publish them. You can either use a guest author account, but when you have many contributors, it can become tiresome.

But thanks to the Simple Guest Author Name plugin, you can quickly add a guest author to a post and link to their blog in a click. You don’t have to worry about how the author box appears to readers; simply add whichever guest author name and link you desire, and that’s it. If you’re inclined, you can even add the author’s avatar easily.

5. Molongui Authorship

molongui authorship

Brought to you by Amitzy, a passionate and reputable WordPress plugin developer, Molongui Authorship is a whole suite of author box features. It extends the default WordPress author box in new and exciting ways. The plugin is an absolute must-have, especially if you’d like to credit two authors on one post.

Molongui Authorship comes with a long of features including, but not limited to, multiple authors, guest authors, a fully-featured author box for regular authors, related posts, author avatars, responsive design, flexible design options, and 70+ social networks, among others.

6. Booster Extension

booster extension

Created by the excellent team at ThemeInWP, Booster Extension is more than just a WordPress author box plugin. It’s a suite of powerful features perfect for all WordPress blogs and magazines. If you are looking for an author bio box plugin, Booster Extension offers you just that, and then some.

For more info, the Booster Extension plugin comes with social sharing buttons with share count, calculate and display read time, feedback emojis, reaction buttons, author box with social profiles, and the like/dislike post button. You can customize the plugin extensively until you drop.

7. Author Bio on Hover

Author Bio on Hover

Add an advance author bio section with the Author Bio on Hover plugin. The plugin includes options for a custom author image, name, social links with icons, bio and more. As expected, it adds a general author profile to posts and displays more information when a user hovers on the author’s name.

The plugin even works if you have multiple authors! It also adds schema markup automatically for Google rich snippets. Plus Author Bio on Hover is compatible with all the top WordPress themes, so whether you’re using Astra, Divi, or something else it should work great.

8. Gutenberg: Standard Post Author Block

Gutenberg Post Author Block

If you’re using Gutenberg, there is a default Post Author Block included that you can use to add a simple author bio to posts. The block displays the author’s image, a custom (editable) byline, name and a link. Use the block options for the avatar size, toggle bio one or off, enable link to the author’s page and to customize the background plus typography.

While not as fancy as some of the other options on this list, it’s free and already a part of WordPress core – so no extra plugin is needed. Just search for the block!

Conclusion

There really aren’t that many WordPress author box plugins. The market isn’t saturated as you’d expect because the author box is such a small feature. As such, many plugins haven’t been updated in years, which disqualified them for our list automatically.

All in all, an author box allows you to improve engagement on your WordPress site on auto-pilot. It offers your readers the chance to meet and engage with your authors, and the blog in general. The above list of free author box plugins offers you enough options to add any type of author box you want.

Which is your favorite author box plugin for WordPress? Let us know in the comments!

wordpress-author-box-plugins
Article by Freddy WPExplorer.com guest author
9 Comments
  1. Dragan · 7 years ago

    Thanks for featuring our Fancier and Fanciest Author Box plugins, Freddy.

    I like the other solutions, too. Great list.

    • Freddy · 7 years ago

      It’s my pleasure Dragan; Fancier and Fanciest Author Box plugins are indeed masterpieces I was glad to find. Thank you for passing by and the compliment 🙂

  2. Ana · 7 years ago

    Hi Freddy,
    Thanks so much for including Starbox in this article!

    • Freddy · 7 years ago

      You’re welcome Ana. Which is your favorite feature in Starbox? Cheers and thank you for commenting!

  3. Kristina Svensson · 5 years ago

    Hi,
    Great article but a couple of them are no longer maintained according to WordPress.
    So the options are fewer today.

    • Kyla · 4 years ago

      The issue with these sort of plugins is because they generally will always work and won’t break with new WordPress updates authors simply get too lazy to update the readme.txt file to state that it’s been tested with the latest versions of WordPress when in fact it still works perfectly fine. Also these plugins generally just return data using core WordPress functions so there shouldn’t be any security concerns (another reason they don’t need constant updating). We are actually planning to release our own 😉

  4. Gaurav · 4 years ago

    Please tell which author box you have on this post ?

    • Kyla · 4 years ago

      Ours is custom, but you could probably use Ultimate Authorbox to create something similar.

  5. jasen hudson · 3 years ago

    Great plugins for WordPress. These plugins in 2022 definitely will be used to send push notifications.

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