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6 Best Free Author Bio Box Plugins for WordPress Compared (2024)

Updated: January 17, 2024 by Editorial Staff | Reviewed by: Syed Balkhi | Reader Disclosure

Are you looking for the best free author bio box plugins for WordPress?

Adding an author bio box can help you connect with your readers, boost authority, and even attract new writers to your site.

In this article, we’ll highlight the best free author bio box plugins for WordPress.

7 best free author bio box plugins for WordPress compared (2021)

Why Use an Author Bio Box Plugin for WordPress?

An author bio box plugin lets you customize and display an author bio section at the end of your WordPress posts.

Many WordPress themes have this feature built-in. However, a plugin lets you change how the author bio is displayed, add social media links, and much more.

Author bio example

Adding a custom author bio box section can benefit your WordPress blog in many ways.

  • Improve author credibility and authority with your readers
  • Build a connection between readers and authors
  • Help persuade guest authors to write for your website

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the most popular author bio box plugins for WordPress that you can use on your WordPress website.

1. Simple Author Box

Simple Author Box

Simple Author Box is the best author bio box plugin. What started as a simple way to add a clean author box to your WordPress posts has grown into a very feature rich plugin.

This plugin lets you customize nearly every aspect of your author bio box. You can add an author bio, social media links, and a custom Gravatar .

You also have complete control over the colors, typography, background, and more. There’s an option to show the author’s email address, so your readers can get in touch directly.

The real-time preview box lets you see the changes to your author bio box as you customize it.

If you want even more features, then there’s a pro version that lets you display an author box before or after content, add website links, get more social icon styles, include guest and co-authors, and more.

For more details, see our complete Simple Author Box review . You can also follow our guide on how to add an author info box in WordPress posts .

2. WP Post Author

WP Post Author

WP Post Author is a simple and easy to use author bio plugin. It seamlessly integrates with your site’s design and will blend into your content.

This plugin will display the author’s avatar, name, company role, a short bio, and social media icons.

You have control over which elements of the author bio will display, along with the alignment of the text and author image.

There are 3 different widgets and a shortcode you can use to display your author bio in your sidebar and other areas of your website.

3. Meks Smart Author Widget

Meks Smart Author Widget

Meks Smart Author Widget lets you add an author bio to any widget area of your site.

You can display an author avatar, a short bio, links to social media, and a link to the author profile page that lists all their articles.

This can be a great way to add a good-looking author bio widget to your WordPress sidebar . The plugin setup is fairly straightforward, and it uses an auto-detect feature to find the correct post author and display their bio instantly.

Since the plugin will fetch author information from their WordPress profile, you need to make sure that all authors fill out their author information by editing their profiles.

Starbox

Starbox is a feature-rich and easy-to-use author bio box plugin. The goal is to make it as easy as possible to create a custom author bio box.

You’ll find a few different themes you can use to customize your author bios.

With this plugin, you can create unique author bio boxes for every author on your website. You have control over social media profiles, name, job or role, image, and more.

There’s even the option to add a tabbed author bio that includes the latest posts from that author.

If you’re running an online store , then this plugin can integrate with WooCommerce to display unique author bios as well.

5. Molongui Authorship

Molongui Authorship

Molongui Authorship is a great WordPress author bio box plugin that lets you display an author box, co-authors, and guest contributors.

This plugin makes it easy to create author bios and guest author bios without creating a WordPress account.

If you want to add additional authors and co-authors to WordPress, then see our guide on how to add new users and authors to your WordPress blog .

There are many customization options, including multiple layouts, colors, typography, author avatars, social media icons, and more. You can also control whether the author bio displays above or below the content.

Plus, you can fully customize the author bio using the WordPress Customizer , which makes things easy.

6. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)

AIOSEO

All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 3 million websites. Along with a comprehensive SEO toolkit to optimize your WordPress website for more traffic, you’ll also find features to improve your author profile pages.

By default, your author profile pages display a list of posts from respective author’s on your site. These can help your readers find more content from their favorite author.

AIOSEO also expands the default WordPress author profile and lets you add social media links in the metadata. You can connect your Facebook and Twitter profiles to make your author profiles and author bio more engaging.

AIOSEO author bio social links

For more details, you can see our guide on how to display author’s Twitter and Facebook on the profile page .

Note: There’s also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers a powerful Author SEO addon. This allows you to create a detailed author bio to meet Google’s E-E-A-T content guidelines and improve your rankings.

In your author bio, you can add E-E-A-T signals, including education, job title, employer, categories of expertise, and more, to help search engines easily identify your credentials.

AIOSEO E-E-A-T Author SEO addon

You can also add a mini bio that appears when a user hovers over the author name, enable or disable compact bios, add a reviewer for your articles, and more.

Bonus: SeedProd

SeedProd

SeedProd is a premium drag and drop page builder for WordPress . It lets you create custom WordPress themes, layouts, and landing pages, without needing to touch a line of code.

It comes with an ‘Author Bio’ block that lets you quickly showcase information about a specific author on any page or post in WordPress.

The author bio block pulls the author details directly from the WordPress user profile and displays it automatically.

Plus, with SeedProd’s template kits and 90+ page blocks, you can easily create custom author pages that include an author bio, social profiles, recent articles, social media feeds, and more.

Create a custom author page with SeedProd blocks

For step by step instructions, see our tutorial on how to create a custom author page in WordPress .

We hope this article helped you find the best free author bio box plugin for WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to change the author of a post in WordPress and our expert picks of the must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our  YouTube Channel  for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on  Twitter  and Facebook .

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Editorial Staff

About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

6 comments leave a reply.

Syed Balkhi says

Sep 12, 2024 at 2:24 pm

Hey WPBeginner readers, Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner? Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes. You can get more details about the contest from here . Start sharing your thoughts below to stand a chance to win!

Mrteesurez says

Jul 12, 2024 at 3:15 pm

Thanks for the list, I have chosen WP Post Author as I see it has features I have, including shortcode to show the author box in any area across my site. This is a good plugin to will help me out, to show a beautiful author box on my site.

Ameen Khan says

Feb 5, 2023 at 2:16 pm

thanks it worked!

WPBeginner Support says

Feb 6, 2023 at 10:48 am

Glad our article was able to assist!

Oct 19, 2018 at 1:54 pm

Hello Sir, Thanks For The Nice Article And Great Information.

Lopo Lencastre de Almeida says

Nov 19, 2014 at 9:26 am

Just mentioning my own oldie https://wordpress.org/plugins/author-box-2/

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How to Add a Author Bio Box to WordPress Posts

Displaying an author bio box at the end of your blog posts is a wonderful way to provide readers with more information about the author, improve engagement, and build a personal connection between the author and the audience. This can be especially important for blogs with multiple authors, as it helps highlight individual contributors and their expertise.

Add below code snippet to the functions.php file of your theme to add a custom author bio box to your WordPress posts. This box will display the author's profile picture, name, and biography at the end of every single post.

Note: To take full advantage of this feature, make sure each author on your site has a completed bio. You can add this by going to the WordPress admin panel:

1. Navigate to Users > Profile. 2. Fill in the "Biographical Info" section with the author’s bio. 3. Optionally, you can upload a profile picture by associating the email with a Gravatar account.

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7 Best Author Bio Plugins for WordPress in 2024

Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins

A beautiful author bio section is an essential part of a WordPress post. Some themes have an inbuilt option for displaying details of the writer, including his latest posts, social media profiles, etc. If your theme doesn’t have such an option, search for author bio plugins and install a suitable one.

There are a number of author bio plugins available in the WordPress library to display your biography in an attractive manner. Choosing the right plugin that matches your requirements, and theme design—is up to you.

Table of Contents

  • 1.1 1. Simple Author Box
  • 1.2 2. Starbox
  • 1.3 3. WP Post Author
  • 1.4 4. Meks Smart Author Widget
  • 1.5 5. Avatar
  • 1.6 6. Author Bio Box
  • 1.7 7. PublishPress Authors

Best Author Bio Plugins for WordPress 2024

These are our favorite author bio plugins for WordPress.

1.  Simple Author Box

Author Bio Plugins

Simple Author Box is one of the best WordPress author bio plugins. It shows the author’s name, avatar, biography, and website at the end of the posts. It is integrated with more than 30 social media accounts.

Demo & Download

author-box-plugins

Starbox is another popular, free author box plugin for WordPress. It is packed with professional-quality templates to display your author profiles in attractive designs. Insert your author box on top or bottom of the post with social media icons to build a strong portfolio and expand your social network.

It is easy to use and customizable. The plugin allows you to set a unique theme for your profile and upload a custom image if required. This way, it helps you to override your default Gravatar image easily.

3. WP Post Author

author bio plugins

WP Post Author is another free author box plugin for WordPress bloggers. It will show author avatar, name, and designation on all author-related posts with social media page links.

There are multiple author widgets to showcase your biography on single posts and author pages. It collects data from the author’s profile dashboard and display them to inform readers about your career background, recent posts, social links, etc. You can place author boxes anywhere on WordPress using a short code or through plugin settings.

4. Meks S mart Auth or Widget

Author Bio Plugins

Smart Author Widget is a great plugin to show author biography on WordPress. It automatically detects post authors and shows their details on single posts and author archives.

The plugin is customizable in terms of avatar image size, avatar image link, and user display name link, and you can replace the widget title with the user display name if needed.

author profile wordpress

Avatar is a powerful author bio solution for Elementor websites. It helps readers to know more about the authors and to contact them personally through social sites.

The plugin has a block-based editor to add or remove sections like user picture, name, biography, icons, etc. There is a built-in image editor to beautify author images using CSS filters. Avatar is best to showcase single or multiple authors in a post.

6. Author Bio Box

Author Bio Plugins

Author Bio Box will show the writer’s biography and social media connections at the bottom of the post. You can set the size for an avatar image, and assign a color for backgrounds, texts, title, and borders to give a unique look to your author bio section.

7. PublishPress Authors

wordpress author

PublishPress Authors is a freemium author bio plugin for WordPress. It lets you show beautiful author boxes in every blog post.

Not only one author, it allows you to feature multiple authors if needed. You will see an option to add multiple authors in the post editor. PublishPress Authors retrieve all their user data and display them on the front end. This way it can show unlimited authors on your blog posts.

Creating guest authors is another interesting feature of the plugin. No need to create separate user accounts for guest bloggers. But they can have a custom author bio section and own archive page to list all their blog posts.

PublishPress Authors offers five different layouts for author boxes-simple list, boxed, centered, inline, inline with avatars.

Are you using any author bio plugins? Which is your favorite?

An author bio plugin is a tool that allows you to easily add and manage author biographies on your website. It helps showcase contributors, increase credibility, and personalize your content.

Yes, most author bio plugins offer customization options. You can typically change the layout, font styles, colors, and even add social media icons to enhance the appearance and match your website’s design.

Some WordPress themes such as Astra and Kadence WP have built-in options to display the author bio under each blog post. If your theme doesn’t have any such option, you should install a third-party plugin for the purpose.

Your author bio should contain the following points, 1. Name and current designation 2. Key achievements 3. Previous writing experiences 4. Website URL 5. Email address 6. Social media profile links

No, author bio plugins are designed to be user-friendly and require no coding knowledge. They usually provide a simple interface where you can input your information and customize the settings without any technical expertise.

Yes, having author bios with links to individual profiles or websites can improve your website’s SEO. It allows search engines to understand the authorship of the content and associate it with specific individuals.

Yes,  author bio plugins support multiple authors, making it easy to showcase contributions from various writers. You can include their names, biographies, and profile pictures.

Yes, many author bio plugins offer options to insert the necessary code manually, making them compatible with custom-built websites as well. You can still enjoy the benefits of displaying author information.

While author bio plugins themselves are generally secure, it’s essential to ensure that you download them from reputable sources. Regularly updating the plugins and keeping your website secure is crucial.

Yes, there are several free author bio plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository. However, premium versions often offer more features, customization options, and dedicated support.

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10 Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins for 2022

Flori Needle

Updated: December 14, 2021

Published: December 15, 2020

Author bios are essential to any website. They not only show site visitors who is responsible for creating the content they enjoy — but they also allow authors to claim their writings and outline the skills that give them the authority to write about certain subjects. In addition, author bios can persuade guest bloggers to write for your site because they know you’ll allow them to claim credit for their work.

author biography on wordpress

When author bios include links to an author’s own site, social media profiles, and email addresses, they can also encourage interaction and engagement between creators and site visitors.

Whether you’re crediting guest bloggers or resident writers, you should include author bios on your WordPress website , and you can simplify the process by using a WordPress plugin . This post lists ten high-quality author bio plugins to choose from that will help you credit creators and help site visitors create connections with authors who inspire them.

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10 Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins

  • Molongui Author Box, Guest Authors & Co-Authors
  • Starbox - the Author Box for Humans
  • Simple Author Box
  • Co-Authors Plus
  • Author Bio Box
  • WP Post Author
  • About Author
  • Superb Blocks
  • Awesome WordPress Author Bio
  • Avatar - Author Box for Elementor

1. Molongui Author Box, Guest Authors & Co-Authors

Molongui Authorship makes it easy to create author bios for both resident writers and guest contributors without requiring them to create a separate WordPress account. The toolbar gives live previews, so you can make customizations to your liking and see how they would look within your site pages.

demo of wordpress author bio plugin with live previews

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How to Design and Craft a Killer WordPress Author Bio That Readers Will Love

The best author bio features add a layer or two of context to the person behind the article. learn how to design your bios in a way that will grab your readers' attention and instil trust in your business..

Web page on a computer screen

To many, author bios are an afterthought. An easy way to give some significance to the creator of a certain piece of content—nothing more, nothing less.

Pushing forward to an age of authority and authenticity, it would seem that author bio features must have some importance past mere vanity. In fact, CodeinWP made sure to add prominence to theirs in order to fix a major SEO issue. In a transparency report where they reveal that a mix of issues (including host reverse proxy, no-indexing on content, and problematic affiliate links) culminated in a major SEO penalty that led to a loss of 50% of their business overnight .

It’s weird to think about published content that lacks an author bio of some sort. You might even go as far as to say that an article lacking any information besides the author’s name feels just a bit sketchy.

Adding detailed author bios wasn’t the singular reason for CodeinWP eventually fixing their recent major SEO issues, but it’s interesting to note the fact that they even played a role. Google’s search engine spiders may not be human, but they’re working to figure out exactly what humans respond best to on the internet.

As such, the human user experience lies at the center of almost every major new Google initiative: Mobile-first search , Google AMP , and even their newest super tool: Google Optimize . It seems to make sense that they’d preferentially index pages attributed to authors who contribute authority and authenticity by putting a face behind each topic.

At the absolute minimum, an author bio feature has to communicate the article writer’s name. But the best author bio features add a layer or two of context to the person behind the article. Besides a name, the best author bios share elements that include things like:

  • The person’s title
  • The person’s credentials, like high-quality publications they write for, or huge projects they successfully launched
  • The person’s interests and relationship to the industry represented on the blog
  • A link to their home online
  • A link to relevant social profiles

A byline is considered a perk when it comes to writing. Most authors charge more per word to take it off (also known as ghostwriting). Conversely, most authors are actually willing to charge less for the ability to write under their own name for your blog. The more attention you give to the byline, the better quality writer you’ll attract. This is especially true if your blog offers guest blogging opportunities that don’t necessarily pay but provide the author with an opportunity to promote themselves and their business.

Working with a well-known writer in your industry is a win-win for both parties: you benefit from exposure to their audience and association with them, they benefit from the ability to make money doing what they love, and to be recognized for it. Many writers have a passion project they’re working on in addition to writing, and building an audience is important for that passion project to really take off.

Knowing all of these nuances when it comes to working with writers, it becomes easier to understand the importance in providing a prominent author bio for the people you hire to write articles for your website. So, if you’ve decided to add more visual interest to the author bios on your multi-author WordPress site, the next step is to choose the right design to showcase them properly.

Why It’s Important to Showcase Author Profiles

Ensuring the authors on your blog have an informative profile displayed alongside each post gives you a great chance to highlight the personalities behind the content.

This, in turn, will help differentiate your blog from the competition. It will also give you a good opportunity to show off the credentials of your authors. With links to personal websites and social media profiles, your readers can get a better sense of who you are, and why they should pay attention to your content.

If you’re working with multiple authors, especially if hiring them as contributors, giving them an opportunity to promote their own personal projects in their profile can be a great way to reward them for their efforts.

Your goal should be to ensure that your great content doesn’t get lost in the ever-growing sea of blog posts and articles that make up the internet. One way to do that is by giving your readers something to remember your website for.

In this section, you will learn how to highlight one of your greatest assets: the personalities behind your content.

How to Write a Great Author Bio

Before we get onto how to make your author profiles look good on your website, it’s important to take some time to consider what makes a good author bio or profile. The main goal here is to connect with the reader and build a brand around the author. Therefore, this goal should be the driving factor when crafting the author’s profile.

On most blogs, you will have an opportunity to give each author a by-line after their post. Some WordPress website configurations also include a longer author bio, which is featured on a separate author profile page. This means there are two different formats to consider here: the in-post author profile and the author page profile.

WordPress User Profile screen

Creating an Effective In-Post Author Profile

The in-post author bio or profile is traditionally displayed at the end of each post on your blog. As the visitor has just read through a whole article before reaching the profile, the aim here is to keep the bio as concise as possible, to ensure it doesn’t get skipped over.

Some key ideas to follow when creating your in-post profile include:

  • Keep it relevant
  • Highlight your achievements
  • Avoid too much self-promotion
  • Use links to demonstrate credibility

That doesn’t sound like too much work. So let’s take a look at those steps in more detail.

Keep it Relevant

Demonstrating the depth of your personality by mentioning your interests outside of the scope of the blog has its benefits. However, you can easily take this too far. To still highlight the fact that you have a well-rounded personality, without alienating the reader with obscure or polarizing information, try to ensure the interests you list are related to the topic of the blog.

If you are writing for a tech blog, your readers may find it interesting to know you have a background in coding. This could also boost your credibility with them as it helps qualify your opinions. On the other hand, your readers might relate less to your passion for big-game hunting.

Highlight Your Achievements

Keeping it relevant also applies to sharing your credentials, qualifications, and experience. If you write for other blogs, mention them if they are relevant and it will help further enhance your credibility. If you have a qualification or hold a position in the field you are writing about, feel free to highlight it.

Avoid Over Self-Promoting

If you are offering any kind of relevant service or product, then mentioning it in your profile is acceptable. However, rather than serving as an advertising platform, your bio should simply inform the reader of how they can find out more, or get in touch with you.

If your content did a good job of showcasing your knowledge and expertise in a particular topic, simply leaving a link that points to where they can find out more should suffice.

Social Media and External Links

Your author bio should also include links to your social media profiles and other online presences. Not only does this give you a chance to grow your following, it also helps demonstrate your credibility and give your readers another reason why they should listen to you.

It should go without saying that any social media profiles you link to should be of the same tone as the blog you are writing for. Depending on the blog topic, it could be more a case of LinkedIn resumes, rather than Instagram selfies.

First or Third Person?

Professional profiles are almost always written in the third person, and blogger bios are no exception. Writing in the third person may feel strange at first, but it does have its benefits. For one it can make it easier to write about yourself positively, without it feeling like you are boasting.

Writing in the third person can also help you keep your profile concise, without coming across as being unfriendly. A short and to-the-point profile in the first person might make the author appear terse; whereas the third-person perspective helps establish some distance between its abrupt fictional writer and the person being written about.

Whether you choose the third person or not, stick with your decision and don’t switch perspectives while writing your author profile.

In-Post Author Profile Summary

Keeping it brief and relevant can increase the chances of your in-post author profile being read. More of those readers will then take the next step and check out your social media profiles and links to your other projects. Also, if the blog features a more detailed author page, the reader may be more likely to click through to it.

Throughout your author bio and profile, you will need to walk the fine line between being knowledgeable, without coming across as arrogant, and appearing professional while still being relatable. You want to make it clear why your readers should listen to you, while also highlighting a bit of what makes you who you are.

Your Author Page Profile

Some WordPress themes also include a dedicated author page. This page typically contains the latest posts from that author, as well as their in-post bio, or an extended profile for the author page.

If your theme of choice doesn’t include such a page, this detailed post from Kevin Muldoon for tuts+ will show you how to go about creating one.

On some websites, the in-post author profile is reused on the author page. On others, you may get another chance to demonstrate your abilities in more detail.  As visitors will usually have clicked through to this page specifically to find out more about the author, you can expand on your shorter bio and share some more information about yourself.

The above in-post author bio principles still apply – be relevant and avoid too much self-promotion – when creating an enhanced author page profile. However, you have a bit more leniency. As the visitor has clicked through to find out more about you, you can be a little more relaxed and share more of your personality, achievements, and other projects here.

Taking a Great Author Profile Photo

Every profile needs a photo of the author. Some blogs will use the photo associated with a Gravatar account, while others may allow you to upload a picture directly to your profile. Either way, your author photo should aim to make you look competent, likable, and influential.

If that sounds a bit vague, there are some guidelines you can follow to create a suitable profile photo.  According to research carried out by PhotoFeeler , who looked at 60,000 ratings of 800 profile photos, there is a formula you can follow when it comes to posing for your author photo.

Profile Picture

The main areas to think about when setting up your author profile are your eyes, facial position and expression, and style of dress. Unobscured eyes trump sunglasses and help to portray competence and influence. Wide-eyes can inadvertently radiate a look of terror, while squinched eyes make the subject look more competent, likable, and influential. A defined jawline can also help enhance your status, as too can formal dress. While a toothy smile is a winner on all fronts.

So, according to the results of the study, if you want to come across as more competent, likable, and influential, be sure to squinch your eyes, smile, dress formally, show some teeth, and keep the special effects to a minimum.

Now that we’ve had a brief look at creating your author bio’s content , let’s take a look at how to present it in the best possible context  on your site.

How to Make Your Author Bio Look Good

Your existing WordPress theme will help to define the style of your author bio feature, but you can also customize elements within the plugin settings, or with a bit of custom code.

While you’re in the process of designing your author bio feature, consider the following:

Author Bio Features You Should Include

The design of your author bio feature will be in some way a function of the contents within. Here are a number of elements to consider for satisfying your writers and readers:

  • Headshot : A custom upload or an image pulled from Gravatar. Gravatar is a WordPress.com project that shows a picture of you that shows up on any blog you write for when it’s enabled. In order to use Gravatar, the email on the connected blog has to match the email on your Gravatar account.
  • Social Links : Social icons with a consistent color scheme (as in, all one color) look especially daft. If you decide to allow authors to share only 1 or 2 social links, make sure to first survey your team to see which ones are the most common/important to your writers.
  • Backlink : A link back to an author’s website that specifically provides SEO benefits in terms of passing on the authority of the referring domain ( no-follow links can’t offer these benefits).
  • Short Bio : A place for readers to get to know the author. As a best practice, let the author draft this and let them know if any changes need to be made so they’re aware of them before article publication.

Two additional features to consider:

Allow Contributors to Edit Their Own Bios

Trust writers enough to not use this special perk to harm your website, or do something weird. Writers appreciate the opportunity to refresh their bio as they take on new projects or explore new niches, but hate having to bug the editor to make these changes. If necessary, provide guidelines regarding what’s allowed, and what won’t be tolerated.

Incorporate a Sidebar Display in the Design

sexy author bio

An author bio feature typically occurs at the bottom of a post, or potentially at the top. But if your blog pages have a sidebar, offer the added perk of the author bio repeated there. Authors will appreciate this additional exposure opportunity, and readers will have easier access to information about the author as they read. Meks Smart Author Widget makes it easy to implement this functionality on a multi-author WordPress website.

Once you’ve decided what you want to include in your author bio feature, consider the following design trends before actually building your author boxes:

Author Bio Design Trends

Author bios are an interesting study in terms of design. Most online publications don’t give them the attention that they deserve, so the following design trends can help you to give them the respect they’re craving:

sexy author bio

  • Circular Avatar Images : These make almost any picture somehow look more interesting, and they stand out more than the standard square design. They also help to standardize your author bios.
  • Focus on Twitter : Even if it means forgoing other social media icons. Twitter is considered as one of the best platforms for writers building their audience and will help drive readers to the most appropriate outlet to keep up with their favorite authors.
  • Social media icons with a specific color theme : As mentioned above, a consistent color scheme helps to standardize your author bios, and adds some design flair past just using each social network’s standard associated colors.
  • Total Minimalism : If the outlet has a bigger presence than its writers, it’s fair to adopt a completely minimalistic design to focus on the content. Sprout Social incorporates this type of author bio feature on their blog, though they also draw more attention to it on each person’s author page .

sexy author bio

Before you eventually decide on an author bio design, you’ll want to first decide on a plugin to assist your efforts in displaying your author bios.

Author Bio Plugin Recommendations

You could certainly custom code your own author bio plugin, but why bother before giving these tried and tested options a chance?

As mentioned earlier, some plugins have widgets that allow you to display the current author of an article’s bio in the sidebar. In case you forgot or completely skipped that section, that plugin is the Meks Smart Author Widget.

Every WordPress installation comes out of the box with a basic area on the WordPress dashboard for managing each user’s information. Users can set up their biographical info in the User Profile section .

An author box plugin essentially adds additional fields on top of the ones collecting information under the user area in the dashboard, while also making it easy to format this information in a more aesthetically pleasing way.

Check out our comprehensive list of the top free WordPress author bio box plugins on the market.

Designing a Sexy Author Bio Feature

When it comes to designing an author bio, make sure to:

  • Keep the article’s author and readers satisfied by choosing specific design elements
  • Consider up and coming trends to make your author bios really stand out
  • Incorporate elements of your company’s branding (like color choice) to bring it back to your publication

Hopefully, you’ve now got some tips to follow for making the most of your author bio. From writing an effective author bio to taking a picture that shows you in your best light, you should now be able to start adding a bit of extra personality to your blog posts and promoting your site’s post authors and co-authors.

What are your thoughts on designing a sexy author bio feature? Any plugins we missed, or design trends to consider? Let us know in the comments below.

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Ultimate Blocks

Ultimate Blocks

How to Add an Author Bio in WordPress Posts (Without a Plugin)

Uzzal Raz Bongshi

author biography on wordpress

Have you ever been impressed by the author’s bio? Adding an author bio can significantly enhance your readers credibility and engagement. An author bio not only make an introduction with your readers to the person behind the content but also helps to built trust and a deeper connection.

If you don’t know how to add one, then you’re in the right place. Here I’ll show you how to display the author bio box in WordPress. The author bio box is a small section that allows you to display information about the author of the post with social media profiles.

In this tutorial, we will cover three easy ways. So let’s get started.

Method 1: Using the Block Editor

Method 2: using an author bio box plugin, method 3: using custom code, adding an author bio box in wordpress.

There are several ways to add an author info box in WordPress. You can add the author info box by using the block editor, plugin, custom code, etc. Let’s see the block editor option first.

To show author bio box, make sure you have author biographical info written. If you don’t know, then follow below steps.

Step 1: Write Author Bio

navigate to the Users -> All Users page. Now click on the user’s ‘Edit’ button. 

author biography on wordpress

A new page will open, scroll down to the ‘Biographical Info’ section. In this section, add all the information of the author. You can also add HTML in this field to add links. 

author biography on wordpress

If the author has no profile picture, tell the author to set it from Gravatar . Finally, click on the update user, and user information will be saved.  

Step 2: Open ‘Single Post’ Template

Navigate to Appearance -> Editor.

author biography on wordpress

Click on Templates.

author biography on wordpress

Hit ‘Single Posts’.

author biography on wordpress

Step 3: Add Author Bio Block

Now, you will see the single post template. Click anywhere in the template and it will be expanded.

author biography on wordpress

Scroll to the area, where you want to add author bio box. For me, I am going to add author bio box above comments.

author biography on wordpress

Click on the add block button and search for ‘Author Biography’ block. Insert the block by clicking on it.

author biography on wordpress

If you like you can also customize your author bio box from the block settings.

author biography on wordpress

Finally, hit ‘Save’ button.

Now, you will have a author bio box in your post’s.

author biography on wordpress

If you are using a theme that doesn’t come with an author info box, then you can use this method. In this method, you are going to need a plugin named Simple Author Box . 

author biography on wordpress

Install & activate the plugin. If you like to customize any settings then navigate to Appearance -> Simple Author Box.

author biography on wordpress

From here, you will be able to customize your author box.

To add a author box, your don’t need to do anything. After the activation of the plugin, an author box will be automatically added to every post.

Here’s a look of the author box.

author biography on wordpress

In this method, you need to add code to your website. 

First, navigate to ‘ Appearance -> Theme Editor ’ then click on Theme Functions(functions.php)

author biography on wordpress

Now copy the below code and paste it in the editor.

Don’t forget to update the file. Now the styling of the info box is left. 

Navigate to Appearance -> Customize, then click on Additional CSS

author biography on wordpress

Now paste the following code in the editor.

Then click on the Publish button above. Now you got a designed author info box. 

No matter which method you follow here, you will always be able to add an author info box very easily. But it is recommended to use method one, as it is easy and doesn’t involve any hardship. If you face any problem, ask without any hesitation. If you have liked this article, then help us by sharing this article. 

Updated on 2024-06-30 (Uzzal Raz Bongshi)

  • Updated ‘Method 1’Method 1: Using the Block Editor’.
  • Updated ‘Method 2: Using An Author Bio Box Plugin’.
  • Updated meta description.
  • Updated intro.
  • 6 Best Author Bio Box WordPress Plugins
  • How to Add New Users & Authors in WordPress
  • How to Add an Author Photo in WordPress
  • How to Change the Author of A Post in WordPress

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Written by:

Uzzal Raz Bongshi is a seasoned content writer with six years of experience, excelling in research, SEO, and tailoring content to diverse audiences. Passionate about storytelling, he constantly seeks to learn and create content that resonates deeply with readers. Outside of writing, he enjoys reading, playing outdoor games, and helping others.

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Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins Compared

8 Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins Compared for 2024 

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  • January 3, 2024

author biography on wordpress

Are you looking for the best WordPress author bio plugins?

Adding an author box to your content can help readers relate to you, increase your authority, and attract guest authors to your WordPress site.

This article will share some of the best author box plugins for WordPress.

What Is a WordPress Author Box Plugin?

An author box plugin is a WordPress plugin that adds information about your content’s author to blog posts and articles. Typically it includes an author avatar, a short author summary, and in most cases, social icons.

Why Use an Author Profile Plugin for WordPress?

WordPress offers an author bio section by default by pulling information from the user profile. The result is a simple author box with limited customization options.

In contrast, an author bio plugin makes it easier to change how the author box looks, add social profile links, and more.

Including a custom author bio section on your website can also have many benefits:

  • Build a more personal connection with your readers
  • Improve the trust and authority of your content
  • Encourage guest authors to write for your website

Best WordPress Author Bio Box Plugins

So far, you know what an author box plugin is and why you need one. Now let’s look at the best author bio plugins for your WordPress site.

1. SeedProd

2. all in one seo, 3. simple author box, 4. molongui authorship, 6. meks smart author widget, 7. wp post author, 8. author bio box, which wordpress author bio plugin is best.

SeedProd WordPress website builder

SeedProd is the best website builder for WordPress. It lets you create custom WordPress themes , high-converting landing pages, and flexible website layouts without code.

This powerful plugin includes 200+ themes and templates you can customize with the drag-and-drop page builder . You can also choose from 70+ content blocks to add custom content to your design.

One of those blocks is the Author Box. It uses the WordPress author profile information to add a fully customizable author box to your site.

SeedProd WordPress author box plugin

You can display the author box anywhere on your website, including posts, pages, and even your sidebar widget area. It’s super-easy to use, and you won’t need help from a developer to get started.

With SeedProd’s theme builder, you can even create an author website without code. It lets you build custom author pages for every writer on your site an customize them visually.

You can create a simple landing page with SeedProd for free. You’ll need the pro version to add an author box with customization options. SeedProd pricing starts from $39.50 per year.

all in one seo best seo plugin WordPress

All In One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin . Over 3 million website owners use this plugin to improve their SEO.

It’s a comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve your website’s search engine rankings without needing an expert.

For example, the easy setup wizard helps you choose the best SEO settings for your site. You can then work on optimizing your site for better search results.

All In One SEO improves the default WordPress author profile. You can add social media links to the metadata and connect your Twitter and Facebook profiles to make your author bio section more engaging.

You can get started with All In One SEO for free. The premium version starts from $49.50 per year.

See our All in One SEO review for more details.

Simple author box plugin

Simple Author Box is one of the best free author box plugins available. Over time, this simple author box plugin has grown into a feature-rich solution with many customization options.

You can customize almost any aspect of your author bio box with author information, social media links, and a custom Gravatar. It’s also easy to control the colors, background, fonts, etc.

You can show the author’s email address for readers to get in touch. Plus, as you work on your custom author bio, you can see a live preview of your changes.

As mentioned before, this plugin is free. However, the pro version offers many more features.

Molongui Authorship WordPress author bio plugin

Monlongui Authorship is an excellent WordPress author bio plugin. It lets you show an author box , guest contributors, and even co-authors on your WordPress site.

You won’t need to create new WordPress accounts to display author bios with this plugin. Instead, you can credit multiple authors at once in your existing post bylines.

Molongui Authorship offers many customization options via the WordPress customizer, including:

  • Social media icons

You can also show the author bio above or below your website content.

Starbox WordPress author bio plugin

Starbox is an easy-to-use free author bio plugin. It lets you make custom author bio boxes using its extensive features.

This plugin offers many starter themes for your author box, allowing you to create unique bios for every author on your website. You can add your author’s name, image, job title, social profiles, and much more.

Additionally, you can add tabs to your author box showing that writer’s latest posts. It also integrates with WooCommerce for your online store.

Meks smart author widget plugin for WordPress

Meks Smart Author Widget is a powerful WordPress plugin that lets you add an author bio to any widget-ready area of your WordPress website. That includes your WordPress sidebar , footer widgets, after post widget area, and more.

For instance, you can show the author’s avatar, bio information, and social media profiles. You can also link to their author profile page, which shows a list of that writer’s blog posts.

This plugin is easy to use and includes a feature that detects the author for specific content automatically. That way, you can find the correct author for an article and display their profile instantly.

For this plugin to work effectively, you’ll need to ensure authors fill out their user profiles completely.

WP Post author plugin WordPress

WP Post Author is a straightforward free WordPress author bio plugin. It works seamlessly with your existing website design, so your author bio box has a consistent look.

This plugin allows you to display the author’s profile picture, job role, name, biography, and social media links. You can also display which information shows in the author bio and its alignment.

There are 3 widgets and a shortcode for displaying your author profile box. Plus, as mentioned before, you can use them in any widget-ready area of your website.

WordPress author bio box plugin

Author Bio Box is a super simple WordPress author bio plugin that’s free to use. It will display a simple author bio section under blog posts on your WordPress site.

You can include an image, social media icons, and a short description in the author box. The overall design is minimalist, so it won’t distract readers from your content.

Author Bio Box lets you control the text, title color, background color, and border size. As a result, you can tweak the design to suit your branding.

After looking at the plugins in this list, you probably want to know which is the best. In our opinion, the best premium WordPress author bio plugin is SeedProd .

SeedProd offers the ability to customize your entire WordPress site, including your author bio. Plus, you won’t need to be an expert or know coding to create a professional look.

The best free WordPress author bio plugin is Simple Author Box .

There you have it!

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress author bio plugins for your business. You might also like our guide on creating a custom single post template in WordPress.

Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment with any questions and feedback.

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author biography on wordpress

Sally Wood

11 of the Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins

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Fancier Author Box by Themato Soup

Fanciest author box, sexy author bio, starbox – the author box for humans, wp about author, wp biographia, simple author box, author box reloaded, custom about author, author box plugin with different description, co-authors plus, a wordpress author box plugin for every occasion, frequently asked questions about wordpress author bio plugins.

These days, an author biography is so much more than an online trend, especially on multi-author websites. In fact, in researching this article, I couldn’t find a single example of resistance to author bios. Apparently, having solid author bio on your WordPress website is a must.

Regardless of what industry you’re in, an author bio establishes reputation and builds trust; it demonstrates to your readers who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what qualifies you as an expert. All of this just isn’t obvious when all you know is an author’s name. As an author, you need to give a little of yourself to connect with your audience. Including a bio goes a long towards this, making the reading experience much more personal. At the end of the day, every transaction (every the transfer of knowledge via an online article) is simply an interaction between two human beings.

An author bio box should be eye catching and attractive. It should complement the theme of your website, using similar fonts and colours and layout. After all, even if you include an author bio box at the end of each and every post, it won’t make any difference if no one notices or reads it.

The easiest way to create and display an author bio box for many of us is to use a plugin. So, today, I showcase eleven of the best WordPress author bio plugins.

With claims that Fancier Author Box is ‘the only author bio plugin you’ll ever need’, Themato Soup peaked my interest with their plugin. This free, relatively light author bio plugin has been downloaded 115,000 times and has been rewarded with a 4.7 star rating.

Fancier Author Box

The features of Fancier Author Box include the ability to integrate all the major social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube and Vimeo). You can add a short bio description, a job title, company, company URL, and social media icons. It will automatically pull in, and display, your gravatar image, as well as all your recent posts.

Unlike some of the other author bio plugins, Fancier Author Box gives you the ability to choose where the author bio will appear on your website. You can nominate that your author bio appear on posts, pages, and in custom post types, and even have the option of nominating whereabouts it appears (above or below your post or page, both, or even not at all). You can change the colours of just about every element of the author bio box, including the tabs, borders, and backgrounds. This author box plugin is fully responsive, and designed to work with responsive WordPress themes.

I must admit, I was a little surprised when I came across the Fanciest Author Box plugin: Themato Soup had already proclaimed that Fancier Author Box is ‘the only author box plugin you’ll ever need’. And yet, here was a premium, paid version of their plugin. I was intrigued…

For $17, you can purchase Fanciest Author Box, giving you more control over your author bio, and a longer list of handy features, including: retina ready display, co-author plugin support, random author options, and lazy load for improved page speed.

However, in my mind, there were two fanciest features , that really stood out from the rest. Using Fanciest Author Box, you can load an author bio as a widget. This means that you can literally place your author bios anywhere on your website, rather than being limited to areas within your page or post.

Fanciest Author Box

The other fanciest feature of this particular author box plugin is its lazy loading social tabs. These maximise your page loading speed, while still allowing your readers to connect with your authors via social media. Each of the social tabs loads the most recent posts by your author, giving your readers a quick snapshot of the content they have recently shared, encouraging social media engagement.

Fanciest lazy loading social tabs

While this particular plugin has only been downloaded 3,000 times, I just couldn’t resist taking a sneak peak (maybe that old saying really is true: sex does sell!).

I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike quite a few of the other author box plugins on the market, this plugin is compatible with the current version of WordPress (version 4.0). The look and feel of the author box is slick, sleek, and professional, and a number of the design elements can be easily customised, including the gravatar size, font sizes and colours, background and highlight colours, and border style and colours. There is also shortcode available for the plugin, so you can place your author bio box anywhere on your website.

Sexy Author Bio

As its name suggests, this particular author box plugin is very much focused on creating positive outcomes for humans (as opposed to search engines and software). So, Starbox’s main claim to fame is generating author boxes that are gorgeous to look at, and are therefore more likely to make your readers click all the way through, and get to know your authors better. I have to admit; Starbox author bios do look quite nice, particularly the social media icon display on the right.

Starbox

Starbox may be the author bio plugin for you, if you’re looking to create different author boxes across your WordPress site. It offers a wide range of customisable settings for individual authors. You can set different themes and colours for different authors. Or, you can choose not to display a bio at all for particular authors. You can upload your own images or headshots, so you aren’t limited to using your gravatar image.

Humans are, again, the number one priority when it comes to usability and set up, with Starbox going so far as to offer a ‘For Humans’ guarantee. There is no coding required, and the menus are quite user-friendly and intuitive. It takes only a matter of minutes to set up each author bio, and the look and feel of the back-end of the plugin is quite polished.

Starbox Backend

There is also a premium, paid version of Starbox, usually priced at $39.99. The premium version of this plugin allows you to remove the ‘Powdered by Starbox’ tag, links and subscription forms, and offers priority support.

With 54,000 downloads, Jon Bishop’s author box plugin is very simple, straightforward, and easy to use. It is the perfect author bio plugin if you’re looking for one without too many bells and whistles.

That’s not to say that WP About Author is without nifty features. In fact, this plugin offers a range of customisation, allowing you to change the background colour and border style of your author box, as well as the size and shape of your gravatar. You can even choose whether to display social media profiles, or simple text links.

WP About Author

This plugin offers quite a remarkable array of features. You can add customisable author bios to posts and pages, as well as RSS feeds, archives, widgets, and even custom post types. Your author box can be hidden globally, or selectively for certain posts, pages, and even categories, and it can be displayed either above or below your content.

You can alter the look and feel of your WP Biographia author box in a number of ways, with options to change the border and background, the size of your gravatar and the length of your bio. The plugin integrates with all major social media platforms, as well as Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, Windows Live Messenger and Jabber/Google Talk instant messaging profiles.

I do have a teeny caution on this plugin. The back end of this plugin is not quite as user friendly as many of the others. It has seven different menu tabs, all of which include multiple settings and options that must be configured. So, if you’re a novice WordPress user, this may not be the author box plugin for you.

WP Biographia

This plugin is definitely up there when it comes to generating the most polished, modern looking author box. In fact, the author box that this plugin generates looks as though it was devised by a team of graphic designers, briefed to create a funky, minimalist design.

Simple Author Box

Best of all, Simple Author Box is mobile responsive, and it supports up to 30 different social media profiles, which can be set to have a rotate effect when readers hover over them. You can program Simple Author Box to display your authors’ name, gravatar, and short biography. It is also fully customisable (including the colour, size, fonts, and styles) so that you can quickly and easily match your author box with your website’s theme.

There is one drawback to the Simple Author Box plugin: you can only insert the author box at the end of a post (not at the beginning, or in a widget).

This plugin is somewhat more restrictive than many of the other author box plugins. It only allows you to add an author box at the end of a single page or post (not at the beginning, or in a widget, or even globally across a particular category or post type).

However, it does enable you to link to (and include an icon for) a number of external websites that the other author box plugins fail to offer, including WordPress.org and the Drupal Association. So, this plugin might be the way to go if you particularly want to highlight the WordPress and Drupal connections of your authors.

Author Box Reloaded

With more than 35,000 downloads, this author box plugin is perfect if your website has multiple authors, who do not each have their own user account. By using Custom About Author, you can create multiple author profiles, and then specify which profile should display for each of your posts. As with all the other author box plugins, you can easily customise your author profiles, and you can include links to all of the major social media platforms and websites.

Custom About Author

Just like all the other author box plugins, this adds an author box to all your website posts, which includes the authors name, gravatar, social media accounts, website URL, and previous posts. You can even nominate where you want the author box to appear (before or after your post).

But, what this plugin has to offer that none of the rest do, is the ability to add a different description for the same author, depending on which post the author box is displayed. So, if your website offers advice on a number of different topics (just like SitePoint does), you may have the same author writing articles on multiple topics (for example, in the case of SitePoint, the same author might write for the WordPress and the Mobile channels). So, you might want two different bios (one that highlights the author’s experience in WordPress, and the other in Mobile). This plugin allows you to do exactly that.

Author Box Plugin with different description

Last, but by no means least, we come to Co-Authors Plus. If you have multiple authors penning the same post, page or custom post type, then look no further. Co-Authors Plus is a free plugin (that has been downloaded almost 100,000 times) that allows you to credit multiple authors for the same post without even having to create a WordPress account for them. While this is technically not an author box plugin, it can definitely come in handy.

Co-Authors Plus

WordPress author box plugins share many of the same standard features. They all allow you to include a gravatar, a short biography, a website URL, and links to all the major social media networks. The majority of these plugins also allow some degree of customisation; fonts, colours, backgrounds, and even gravatar image sizes can all be altered to better suit the look and feel of your website.

Where author box plugins really stand out is in their little, added features. So, Fanciest Author Box offers lazy loading social media tabs; Starbox is extremely easy to use, with an interface that everyone should be able to understand; Simple Author Box has a design that it is sleek, polished, and professional; and Author Box Plugin with Different Description allows you to set different bios for the same author, depending on the contents of each post.

So, before you decide upon an author box plugin, think about exactly what your objective is, and what you are hoping to achieve with your author boxes. Once you’ve got that nailed down, there is bound to be a plugin on the market that offers the added features you need.

What are the benefits of using a WordPress author bio plugin?

WordPress author bio plugins offer several benefits. They allow you to easily add an author bio box to your posts, which can help to establish credibility and build a personal connection with your readers. These plugins often come with customization options, allowing you to adjust the design and layout of the bio box to match your website’s aesthetic. Some plugins also include social media integration, enabling readers to easily follow or connect with the author on various platforms.

How do I choose the best WordPress author bio plugin for my website?

When choosing a WordPress author bio plugin, consider your specific needs and preferences. Look for a plugin that offers the features you need, such as customization options, social media integration, and compatibility with your WordPress theme. It’s also important to consider the plugin’s reviews and ratings, as these can provide insight into the plugin’s performance and reliability.

Can I use multiple WordPress author bio plugins on my website?

While it’s technically possible to use multiple author bio plugins on your website, it’s generally not recommended. Using multiple plugins can lead to conflicts and can slow down your website. Instead, it’s best to choose one plugin that meets all of your needs.

How do I install a WordPress author bio plugin?

Installing a WordPress author bio plugin is a straightforward process. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New. Search for the plugin you want to install, then click “Install Now.” Once the plugin is installed, click “Activate” to start using it.

Can I customize the design of my author bio box?

Yes, most WordPress author bio plugins offer customization options. You can typically adjust the layout, colors, fonts, and other design elements of the bio box. Some plugins also allow you to add custom fields, such as a profile picture or social media links.

Are there any free WordPress author bio plugins?

Yes, there are several free WordPress author bio plugins available. These plugins may offer fewer features and customization options than premium plugins, but they can still be a great option for those on a budget.

Can I add social media links to my author bio box?

Yes, many WordPress author bio plugins allow you to add social media links to your bio box. This can be a great way to encourage readers to connect with you on various platforms.

How do I update my WordPress author bio plugin?

Updating your WordPress author bio plugin is important to ensure it continues to function properly and remains secure. To update a plugin, go to your WordPress dashboard, then go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. If an update is available for your plugin, you’ll see a notification. Click “Update Now” to install the update.

Can I use a WordPress author bio plugin on a multi-author blog?

Yes, WordPress author bio plugins can be used on multi-author blogs. These plugins typically allow each author to create their own bio box, which can be displayed on their respective posts.

What should I include in my author bio box?

Your author bio box should include information that helps to establish your credibility and connect with your readers. This might include your name, a brief description of your expertise or background, a profile picture, and links to your social media profiles.

Sally has worked in marketing, communications, and PR for over 10 years. She is the Chief Wordsmith at Wordly : a copywriting and content marketing agency that works predominantly with WordPress powered websites.

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How to Add an Author Bio Box to WordPress

A lot of WordPress site owners want to give credit where credit is due. In the case of content, part of this is delivering a way to identify the creator. Using an author bio box in WordPress demonstrates professionalism while promoting the one writing the piece.

People often feel more connected to the content if they know a little bit about who created it. This is part of the reason why so many popular sites include this tidbit of information.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you a couple of ways to add the author bio box to WordPress . It will help further engage the reader, especially if you take the time to use an author photo instead of an avatar.

Setting Up the Data in the Author Bio Box

Before you can display the bio information, authors need to create it. Most plugins and themes will use the information stored for the author page. This data is part of the user’s profile.

If you don’t allow others to access user data, you can edit the information yourself. Depending on the author’s user role , he or she may be able to edit this information as well.

From the WordPress dashboard, click the “Users” tool in the left panel.

Users

Hover over a name and click the “Edit” link.

Scroll down and use the “Biographical Info” box to add details.

Add Biographical Info

Scroll down and click, “Update User.”

Update User

If the author already has biographical information available, you need to do nothing in this screen and can move on.

Using Themes

Themes often come with a variety of tools. In fact, adding a new theme may help eliminate the need to install certain plugins or creating code adjustments.

Some themes will automatically have the ability to show the author bio box in WordPress. Unfortunately, not all are capable of doing this. The hardest part is finding a theme that has this featured built-in and will accommodate your design ideas.

So how do you find a theme that has the author box built directly into its framework?

Click the “Appearance” tool from WordPress. This will take you to the Themes screen.

Appearance

Click the “Add New” button from the top.

Add New Theme

Enter “author bio” in the search field. You can also use other terms like “author box” or simply put “author.”

Author Bio Search

Hover over a theme you like and click, “Install.”

Install Theme

Click the “Activate” button after the install to make the new theme live.

Activate Theme

Some themes will simply activate an author box immediately. Others may have settings in the WordPress customizer. Each is different, and you may have to explore the theme a bit to determine its abilities.

Theme Author Box

But what if you don’t want to change your theme? The easiest way to make WordPress add an author box to a post is to use a plugin.

Using Simple Author Box

Perhaps one of the easiest and best author box plugins for WordPress is Simple Author Box . It’s quick to set up and delivers several design options to help you fine-tune it to fit your site.

Install and activate, “Simple Author Box.” This creates a new tool to use in WordPress.

Simple Author Box

Once activated, the author box will show.

Author Box

The default settings for the author box make it usable on the website. But what about giving it more life and pizzazz? Well, Simple Author Box gives you several options to add more visual appeal and functionality.

Click the “Simple Author” feature from the left panel.

Simple Author

In this screen, you have access to a variety of nuances to boost the appearance of the section. You can enable email links, show social media icons, modify the appearance, color and even the typography.

Simply make your changes and click the “Submit” button.

Submit Changes

Using Meks Smart Author Widget

Perhaps you don’t want to show the author box below the article but add it as a sidebar widget instead? That’s when Meks Smart Author Widget comes into play. Although this sidebar widget doesn’t have the customization as the plugin above, it does have a variety of settings to customize.

Install and activate, “Meks Smart Author Widget.”

Meks Smart Author Widget

Go to Appearance and click, “Widgets.”

Widgets

Drag and drop Meks Smart Author into your sidebar. Every theme is different, so you’ll have to decide which sidebar element you want to place this on your own website.

Meks Smart Author

The widget is capable of automatically detecting the author of a post by checking the detection box. Otherwise, you can use any user profile in WordPress.

Auto Detect

This plugin also lets you change the description, links, avatars or even add a custom URL for the author. Once you’re done making adjustments, click the “Save” button at the bottom.

Save Author

Once you do this, your settings will become live on the website.

Live Author Bio

Add More Flavor to Your Website

An author bio box in WordPress may not seem like a requirement for most situations. However, adding that personal element helps develop greater engagement from the reader. It also helps the author by establishing expertise. Discover more of what WordPress hosting can do for you and how it might enhance online success.

What additions do you have to accentuate your writers? How often do you encourage guest posting on your website?

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Is there any tutorial Create Author bio Block

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That’s a great idea. To add an Author bio, simply go to Profile and select the user. You can fill out the Biographical Info section.

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How To Add an Author Bio Box to Your WordPress Posts

  • February 29, 2020
  • Tony Teaches Tech

author biography on wordpress

Hey there!  Some links on this page may be affiliate links which means that, if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I greatly appreciate your support!

In this quick tutorial, you’ll learn how to add an author bio box to the bottom of your WordPress blog posts. This can be something as simple as a short blurb about who you are to introduce yourself to your readers.

By doing this, you’ll increase engagement by automatically linking to other pages on your website.

Install the Ad Inserter Plugin

You’ll need to install the Ad Inserter plugin by Igor Funa . You can also find the plugin from your WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New > and search for “ad inserter”.

If you are using the GeneratePress theme , you don’t need to install a plugin. Instead, you can add a Hook under Appearance >  Elements > Add New Element and paste in the HTML code below.

While this isn’t specifically an author bio box plugin, it does exactly what we need it to do. Plus, it’s smart to limit the number of WordPress plugins you install so your website runs fast. The Ad Inserter plugin allows me to not only add an author bio box, but also insert affiliate disclosures .

After installing and activating, find Ad Inserter in your list of plugins and go to the plugin’s settings page.

Meet the Author Bio Box

Within the large text box on the plugin’s settings page, copy and paste the following code. Modify the title between the <b> tags and your author info between the <p> tags as necessary.

The above code generates a “meet the author” box that looks like this.

Meet the author bio box in WordPress

The great thing about this chunk of code is that it’s mobile friendly. If necessary, you can also change the max-width value from 623px to whatever your mobile breakpoint is set to. If you’re not sure, just play around with how the author bio box looks on various screen sizes.

Ad Inserter Plugin Setting

Next, we need to configure a few settings to make sure the author box shows after the content of your blog post. There are four setting we need to change according to the screenshot below:

Ad Inserter settings for an author biograpy box

  • Rename the block of code to Author bio
  • Enable PHP code execution
  • Select After content for the insertion type
  • Save Settings 1 – 16

Now, you can go to a blog post and see the meet the author box below the last paragraph of your article. You can change where the box shows up by selecting a different insertion location.

Choose Your Headshot Image with Gravatar

The final step is to choose your headshot image. We do this with Gravatar which is built into WordPress.

From the upper-right corner of your WordPress dashboard, click where it says Howdy > Edit My Profile > and in the Profile Picture section, click the link that says You can change your profile picture on Gravatar .

Select your Gravatar image

Here, create a Gravatar account with your WordPress admin email address and upload your headshot. It might take a few minutes, but eventually when you refresh your blog post, you’ll see your headshot appear in your WordPress author bio box.

For more cool ways to use the Ad Inserter plugin, check out my tutorial on inserting affiliate disclosures to your blog posts .

If you have any questions about the Ad Inserter plugin or adding an author bio box to your website, let me know in the comments below.

  • WordPress Plugin

Tony from Tony Teaches Tech headshot

With a strong software engineering background, Tony is determined to demystify the web. Discover  why Tony quit his job  to pursue this mission. You can  join the Tony Teaches Tech community here .

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How to make this for many authors? There are many names and bio

The author avatar/picture is dynamic and will work for multiple authors. A more complete example can be found here https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-an-author-info-box-in-wordpress-posts/

Is it possible to make one word of the text in the affiliate disclosure into a link – to take the reader to the blog disclaimer page? Thank you in advance!!

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Documentation

Post Author Biography block

In this article, more options.

↑ Back to top

Go back to the list of Blocks

The Post Author Biography block allows you to embed a user’s biography from the About Yourself section in Users > Profile into your page or post.

In order to add a Post Author Biography block, click on the Block Inserter  (+) icon.

You can also type /Post Author Biography and hit enter in a new paragraph block to add one quickly

Use the slash command /Post Author Biography to insert a Post Author Biography block

Detailed instructions on adding blocks

Block Toolbar

Every block comes with unique toolbar icons and block-specific user controls that allow you to manipulate the block right in the editor.

The block toolbar in the Post Author Biography block

Transform to

You can transform the  Post Author Biography block into a Group or Columns.

Transform option in the Post Author Biography block

To drag and drop the block to a new location on the page, click and hold the rectangle of dots, then drag to the new location. The blue separator line indicates where the block will be placed. Release the left mouse button when you find the new location to place the block.

Move handles

Move handles in the Post Author Biography block

The up and down arrow icons can be used to move a block up and down on the page.

Get more information about moving a block within the editor.

Change alignment

When you select your Post Author Biography block , a toolbar will appear where you can change the block’s text alignment.

The Post Author Biography block with Align text right selected.

Choose between the options to:

  • Align text left
  • Align text center
  • Align text right

These controls give you the option to copy, duplicate, and edit your block as HTML.

Read about these and other settings.

Block Settings

Every block has specific options in the editor sidebar in addition to the options found in the block toolbar.  If you do not see the sidebar, simply click the ‘cog’ icon.

Cog icon to display the Block sidebar

The Color settings let you set custom text and background colors.

The Post Author Biography block can be customized in terms of custom text and background colors

On this tab, you can change the Font size , Font family , Appearance , Line height , Letter case and Letter spacing .

To access all the typography options click on the 3-dot icon in the right corner of the Typography tab. Click Reset all to reset all the Typography settings you made.

Typography settings tab

Typography settings for Font size let you set custom text sizes. You can choose from the set of available options- Small , Medium , Large , Extra Large or set custom settings. You can also change the units from PX, REM and EM.

Font Size in the Typography settings in the Post Author Biography block

Click on the 3-dot icon in the right top corner in the Dimensions  settings to explore all the Dimensions Settings for the entire button block. For the Post Author Biography block, you set dimensions for margin, padding, or both.

Click the 3-dot icon in the right top corner to explore all the Dimension settings and reset the changes made for the Dimension controls.

Learn more about dimension controls.

The advanced tab lets you add a CSS class to your block, allowing you to write custom CSS and style the block as you see fit.

The advanced section lets you add HTML anchor and a CSS class to your block.

  • Created 2022-09-18

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WordPress Author Pages: How to Make Custom Author Pages

Joe Warnimont

WordPress author pages: they’re essential for website contributors to get credit for work, and publications use them to add a smiling face to their content. Author pages link from author bios (at the end/beginning of blog posts) and often display information about the contributor, their photo, and which articles they’ve written on the website.

In this article, we break down the true definition of an author page , clear up 🧹 some confusion on what some people think are author pages, and walk you through steps 👣 on how to add WordPress author pages .

What’s an author page?

In contrast to an author website , author pages are not full websites for novelists and writers, but rather, simple informational segments of any website that has a blog.

Author pages are:

  • Individual pages that display information about the author of a post.
  • Often linked to from author bios in blog posts:

This is an author bio box, which opens an author page when the writer's name is clicked.

  • Filled with some background about the author, maybe a photo, and a list of articles for which they contributed:

An example of an author page with the author's photo, name, description, total posts, and list of contributions

Here are some of the benefits of WordPress author pages:

  • Contributors can quickly find their past work and put it in a portfolio.
  • Articles appear more credible and from a real person, seeing as how author pages can showcase a photo and description of the author.
  • Brands seeking writers can find posts they like, then click through to the author page to find background and contact information on that contributor.
  • Site visitors can feel more confident in what they’re reading, seeing that it’s from a writer with industry experience.

Author pages vs. author galleries

Many people confuse author pages with author galleries.

An author page, at least in terms of how WordPress defines it, is a single page meant for one author’s information and blog archives. You can set global styling so that every author on your website has a place to list their recent blog posts, author information, and even social media links:

an example of WordPress author pages

An author gallery (or listing) page, features multiple contributors from one website, as a sort of showcase of all writers and content creators for visitors to click on and view more information about:

author collection or list

Theoretically, an author gallery would lead to author pages after visitors click on the author links.

Overall, WordPress author pages help all parties, making them ideal for improving the credibility and humanization of blog posts. And they’re easy to implement! So, keep reading to learn all about how to make WordPress author pages.

How to make WordPress author pages

By default, WordPress provides author pages, but they’re limited to whatever design was included with your current theme.

For instance, you may have something simple like this, where you see an author name, bio, and list of articles:

built in WordPress author pages

Or you may see nothing at all, as many theme developers leave out author pages altogether.

So, there’s a good chance you want at least some creative control over the author page, or you want to add one since your theme doesn’t have any.

You can use one of these methods to add/customize a WordPress author page:

Method 1: Use a plugin (easy)

  • Method 2: Use a page builder with custom archive templates (easy)

Method 3: Manually create an author page in your theme files (hard)

Before anything.

Before attempting any of these methods, make sure the user information for at least one author is filled in. This way, you can test to see if elements like photos and descriptions appear correctly when customizing the author page.

To complete user information, go to the Users tab on WordPress. Select a user, then fill in important fields like:

  • Display Name Publicly As
  • Website (some themes show this in the author page):

name and website for WordPress author pages

  • Biographical Info
  • A Profile Picture:

profile picture and bio

Finally, click the Update Profile button.

⚠ Note: If you have multiple contributors to a blog, you must have each of them complete their own User profile information; only then will the content show on their author page.

One way to customize elements of your WordPress author page is with a plugin. There’s no specific author page plugin, but several membership plugins allow you to create rich profiles for each of your contributors.

Install the plugin

For this method, we’ll use the Ultimate Member plugin. To begin, download and install the plugin to your WordPress site:

Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin

Author(s): Ultimate Member

Current Version: 2.8.6

Last Updated: July 2, 2024

ultimate-member.2.8.6.zip

Create core pages

After activation, Ultimate Member displays a button at the top of the dashboard to Create Pages . Click on that to generate user profile pages (so you don’t have to do it manually):

create pages button

This brings you to the automatically generated pages, which you can leave as they are.

The User page (with the User selection) is designated as the author page, so all of your WordPress author pages will now look a little different:

user page setting

Access author page

To view the changes, go check one of your current author pages (by clinking through the author’s name on a blog post). You’ll now see a module from the Ultimate Members plugin with author information:

results

It may show up in a slightly different area depending on your theme:

here's the WordPress author pages without much content

Customize author page content

Some of the information typed into the WordPress User page may appear, but you can better customize the author page by clicking on the Gear icon. After that, choose Edit Profile :

edit profile

Here, we recommend that you:

  • Upload a profile photo
  • Add a cover photo
  • Customize the author bio

Click Update Profile when you’re done:

adjusting the profile

The results are instantaneous, but you may notice that there’s an empty space below the bio and author menu, where it says, “Your profile is looking empty.” To add content to that section, move to the next step:

inserting images for WordPress author pages

Add content to author page

Go to Ultimate Member > Forms in WordPress, then select the Profile Form button.

This is where you add extra fields that authors can fill out to complete their author pages.

Click the + box underneath the first tab:

add to the profile form for WordPress author pages

Decide from whichever fields you want to add. Some ideas include:

  • Website URL
  • Email Address
  • Social media links like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn:

field options

Once you’ve inserted the new fields , you’ll see them in the form builder.

Click Update to proceed:

add more fields for WordPress author pages

Now, when an author navigates to their author page, they can click on the Gear icon and choose Edit Profile to fill in the new fields:

settings button

As you can see, each author page is now customizable with Website URL, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn fields:

website URL and more

After clicking Update Profile , the author page shows links to the fields:

the result for a WordPress author pages

Finally, to view posts from that author, the user simply has to click on the Posts tab (pencil icon) for a list of post archives:

author biography on wordpress

Method 2: Use a page builder (easy)

Many page builders plugins , like Elementor , Divi, and Brizy , let you fully customize every detail of your WordPress author pages by using Blog Archive templates. The Blog Archive templates are simply lists of past blog posts under a certain author. You can then add more details with the drag and drop editor.

👉 For this tutorial, we’ll use Elementor. Keep in mind, however, that you must have the Pro version of Elementor for this to work.

With Elementor Pro installed, go to Templates > Theme Builder in the WordPress dashboard.

The Theme Builder shows several templates to choose from. Pick the Archive tab, and click on one of the Add New icons:

archive template

Elementor offers a large collection of pre-made templates for archive pages. If you’d rather start from scratch, simply click on the X-out button to get rid of the template library.

Otherwise, select a layout that’s suitable for your author pages:

pick a template

To start building the WordPress Author page, search for the Author Box module in the Elements section of Elementor. Drag and drop the Author Box module wherever you want it to appear on your author page:

author box in elementor

Make sure you set the Source as Current Author .

Other than that, you can customize the Author Box however you please.

Consider including:

  • Profile pictures
  • Links to websites
  • Biographies:

content for author box

If you selected an archive template, you should already see the list of this author’s blog posts underneath the Author Box . If not, search for the Archive Posts element and drag it onto the page:

add archive posts element

Click the Publish button when you’ve finalized the design of your author page.

Before the author page gets published, Elementor displays a popup window to specify where you want to display the template.

Click Add Condition , then select Author Archive . To activate this template as the Author Archive page for every author on your site, pick the All option.

Finally, click Save and Close to finish the process:

add WordPress author pages to all archives

Now go and check one of your author pages to see the results! 🤩 You may have to go back and edit some of the design to get it just right. Otherwise, your author pages are ready to go, as long as every author completes their User page on WordPress:

final WordPress author pages

This method offers complete control over the styling of the WordPress author page, but it’s limited to those who can handle editing theme or child theme files .

👉 To use this method, follow these steps:

  • You must first connect to your website’s server with an FTP Client like FileZilla .
  • Once connected, use the FTP Client to navigate to /wp-content/themes/(thenameofyourcurrenttheme)/ .
  • Create a file called author.php in the current theme folder. (Use the current one if there’s already an author.php file):

ftp connection to for WordPress author pages

Here’s some code you can paste into the new author.php file, which adds a nice author box and the author’s written posts to the page:

author card with code

The main reason for using this method is to have full control over the styling. So, you can go to Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS to add CSS code for the Author page.

Here’s some example CSS you can try (feel free to customize it):

Create your WordPress author pages today 🚀

In this article, we explained:

  • What a WordPress author page is, and why it’s so important for contributors, site owners, and site visitors.
  • That WordPress automatically comes with built-in author pages, but there’s limited customization, and many themes change their display.
  • How to use a plugin to customize the WordPress author page.
  • Using a page builder (like Elementor) to customize the WordPress Author page.
  • Manually creating and editing an author page with custom code in the theme files.

Do you have any questions about any of these methods on how to make a WordPress author page? If so, share your thoughts in the comments!

By Joe Warnimont

Themeisle contributor.

Joe Warnimont is a seasoned writer with more than 10 years of experience covering topics such as WordPress, web hosting, eCommerce platforms, and social media. His educational background paved the way for a multifaceted marketing and web design career at talent agencies, production studios, and a software company specializing in golf courses. Joe resides in Chicago, writing for tech brands and publications like Themeisle and HostingAdvice.

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How to Show the Author Description on WordPress Watch Overview

How to Show the Author Description on WordPress

When you show an author description or bio at the end of your blog posts, you:

  • Build credibility, authority and influence : by providing some background info— such as who you are and what you do —you raise the status of your content, helping with your organic content marketing by increasing shares and opt-ins.
  • Grow your list : the author description is often used to also offer a free resource to visitors in exchange for their email address.
  • Boost social audiences : some use the space to encourage visitors to connect with them on social media, in addition to other social links provided on the blog.

You may also want to show the author description for other contributors to your blog.

Of course, entering an author description each and every time you create a post is inefficient, cumbersome, and difficult when changes to that description are required.

Instead you need a single place to enter and/or edit it for each author, immediately updating it for all of that author’s posts.

How do you set it up to work that way on WordPress?

There are two ways.

First, some WordPress themes have it built in. I’ll start by showing you how to find out whether your theme is one of them.

Second, you can use a suitable WordPress plugin. In the second section of this post, I review three of the most popular plugins available—and show you where to go to find alternatives.

Get the cheatsheet you need to show the author description on WordPress :

Download FREE Now

How to Check If Your Theme Supports Showing Author Descriptions

Start by navigating to Appearance > Themes on the WordPress menu.

Appearance &gt; Themes

Click on the Customise button for your active theme.

Click the Customize button

Click on Theme Options .

Click Theme Options

Look for something that relates to an author bio or author description.

For example, for a theme I installed on a test site to write this post, there was a link for Author Biography options .

Author Biography options

For your own theme, it’s probably going to say something different, or maybe on a submenu somewhere.

This is down to the theme, rather than WordPress, so each one is likely to be a little different.

You can also of course consult the theme’s documentation. Try googling wordpress theme [theme name] documentation to find it.

For the Inclusive theme , used in this example, that would look like this:

Google for some documentation for the theme

If you can’t see it in the customization options or referenced in the documentation, then it’s unlikely your theme supports it. You’ll need to look at WordPress plugins instead, which are covered in the section below.

Let’s see an example of how our example theme, Inclusive, caters for showing an author description.

After clicking through on Author Biography options , there are some checkboxes available, enabling you to show the author biography on both posts and pages.

Enable author biography on posts

Again, the theme for your own blog will show something different.

In this case, after ticking the checkbox, the preview refreshed, and showed the author bio at the end of each post, as shown here:

Author bio preview

The immediate issue was that it was showing ‘admin’ as my author name.

This wasn’t an issue with the theme itself, but I needed to adjust my nickname within my WordPress profile, and then set the nickname to be displayed rather than the user name.

Change author name wordpress

But what if you didn't want the author name appearing separately above the description, and instead wanted to solely show the author name in the bio?

And what if you wanted the text to appear to the right of the portrait image, rather than below?

For this example theme, there wasn’t an easy way to do this, but you could achieve it via some custom CSS.

It then looked like this:

Author description after custom CSS

The remaining issue was the Visit the author’s website link shown beneath. I wanted a link to instead be incorporated into the author description.

Unchecking the Display the author’s website link option in the theme (shown on one of the images above) did the trick, along with editing the author description from my user profile.

The final version shown at the end of published posts looked like this:

Final author description version for the theme

So I found it was certainly possible, at least with the theme used here, to show the author description through the theme itself. There was no need for a separate plugin.

However, it was a little more complicated than it might otherwise have been by using a plugin. If you go this route too you may need a developer’s help to get it to look the way you need.

So let’s now investigate the alternative, and probably more widely used option—using a WordPress plugin to show the author description at the end of posts...

Plugins to Show the Author Description on WordPress

The following three plugins were the top three plugins listed on WordPress for ‘author bio’ that:

  • Had at least 1,000 active installations.
  • Were displayed as tested with either the latest WordPress version or the one before, showing they continued to be maintained (a t the time of writing, the most recent version had only been released a week previously, and just a couple weeks after the version before that ).
  • Could be used with any theme.
  • Were rated at least four and a half stars.

Wordpress plugin search—author bio

1. Simple Author Box

Simple Author Box is designed to “ Add a responsive author box with social icons to any post ”, with over 50,000 active installations at the time of writing, and rated four and a half stars.

Simple Author Box Plugin

After installing and activating the plugin…

Simple Author Box—installation

… I clicked through on Settings from the Plugins page.

Simple Author Box settings

The settings page looks like this:

Simple Author Box settings page

Before adjusting any settings, I took a look at a test post—the author description was already showing at the bottom as a result of activating the plugin:

Simple Author Box—initial author description

If you want a different profile image to the one supplied to WordPress through Gravatar for your email address, you can do this via your user profile:

Simple Author Box—custom profile image

This is also where you can add social media links to the author description box:

Simple Author Box—add social profile

At least a couple of dozen social platforms are shown, though this still shows some outdated options like StumbleUpon and Google+—perhaps these will be removed in a future update.

Note that, when entering a new social link, you should enter the full link for the platform, not just your handle.

Simple Author Box—add LinkedIn

Back to the test post, the social icons are shown in a separate row at the bottom of the author description:

Simple Author Box with social profiles

Options in the plugin allow you to:

  • Manually insert the author description, using a shortcode or PHP function. Recommended: leave this OFF.
  • Hide the author box if the author description on the user’s profile is empty. Recommended: turn this ON.
  • Show the author’s email address. Recommended: leave this OFF.
  • Open the links from the social profile icons in a new tab. Recommended: turn this ON.
  • Hide the social icons shown beneath the author description. Recommended: personally, I would turn this ON, and thereby potentially increase conversions for a CTA in the author bio—ultimately though, it’s something you’d need to test, and depends on your own goals.
  • Hide the author box on archives. Recommended: leave this OFF.

So, depending on your needs, the final options might look like this:

Simple Author Box—final settings

On the appearance tab, you can adjust:

  • The top and bottom margins of the author box—this is the distance between the top and bottom borders of the author box, and the surrounding content on the page.
  • The padding inside the author box , with separate controls for top, bottom, right and left—so this is the distance between the borders of the author box and the content it contains.
  • The width of the border .
  • The shape of the profile image or avatar—the default is Square , with the other option Circle . With the Circle option, you can add a rotate effect on hover, though I’m not sure why you would want this!
  • Whether to show the author’s website as listed in their profile—this shows a link just beneath the author description, and gives you some other options to make it “nofollow”, open in a new tab, and show the link on the left or right.
  • The social icons type from Symbols to Colored —if set to Colored , you can in addition make them circular or squared, add a rotate effect on hover, add a shadow effect, and show a border around the icons. With those turned on, the icons might look something like this:

Simple Author Box social icon options

The Colors tab provides, as you would expect, various color options for the display of the author description:

Simple Author Box—colors

Via the Typography tab, you can fine-tune the fonts used—both family and size—as well as adjust the size of the social icons.

On the Misc tab, there’s a Load generated inline style to footer option, useful if you have another plugin to optimize the CSS of your website and help with site speed scores. This is on by default, so just leave as-is unless you have a specific reason to change it.

The only aspect missing from the plugin is the ability to show the author description on WordPress pages as well as posts, which for many users would be beneficial.

Simple Author Box does not work on pages

Ultimately however, presuming you don’t need author descriptions on pages, the Simple Author Box plugin seems a very good choice.

It proved to be simple and easy to use, enabling you to show the author description at the bottom of posts within just a few seconds.

The customisation options makes it very easy to adjust the appearance to fit with your website and other requirements.

There’s also an option to upgrade— currently $39 for a single website —giving you some additional options such as the ability to:

  • Change the position of the box to before the content.
  • Link the author’s name to their website.
  • Show a top authors widget.

My own rating for this plugin is four and half stars:

Simple Author Box - four and a half stars

Starbox , “the Author Box for Humans” , gives you an “Author Box that’s gorgeous to look at and makes your readers click all the way through to see more about the Authors” .

At the time of writing, it had over 20,000 active installations, and was rated four and a half stars.

Starbox plugin for showing the author description

After installing and activating the Starbox plugin, again the author description immediately showed at the bottom of posts.

Starbox author description

As shown above, there was an additional ‘Latest Posts’ tab, which after experimenting with the settings I found you can turn off by selecting a different theme for the author box—more on that soon.

I also noted that there was no indication that the link in the author description was clickable, though this was related to style settings for the blog’s theme rather than the plugin, and would simply need tweaking.

Starbox—clickable link

The initial plugin options let you toggle the following options:

  • Show the author description in posts and/or pages.
  • Show the author avatar and name under the title of each post.
  • Show author information within Open Graph tags in the site’s source code—in other words, this adds the article:author tag, and a link to the author’s Facebook page. For this to work, add the Facebook link to the author’s profile.

Starbox settings

The third option above (Show the Starbox with Top Star theme… )—designed to show the author avatar and name under each post title—didn’t seem to do anything when I tested it.

It was possibly something to do with the theme, or maybe I’d missed something—I couldn’t see anything similar listed on their support page .

Either way, it seemed unclear.

The plugin also provides various theme settings, along with a useful preview:

Starbox theme settings

A number of different theme choices are available, and are worth exploring further.

Starbox theme choices starbox-theme-choices.jpg

For example, with the Fancy theme, the author description looked like this:

Starbox Fancy theme

And Minimal turned off the Latest Posts tab:

Starbox Minimal theme

A couple other options let you change the size of the name and description, but any other visual adjustments would need to be via CSS for which you may need a developer to assist.

Further settings relating to the plugin are available on the author’s profile page.

You can for example:

  • Turn the author description on or off.
  • Change the profile image.
  • Adjust the theme for an individual author, along with the position of the author description ( Up or Down ).
  • Enter in the job title, company and company URL for the author.
  • Add links for Twitter and Facebook, with further social links available by upgrading.

Starbox author settings

Overall, while the plugin works fine, I found it less comprehensive than Simple Author Box, a little clunkier to use, and the choices less intuitive.

For any visual adjustments beyond the theme settings, you would need knowledge of CSS or the help of a developer.

However, unlike Simple Author Box, it does display the author description on WordPress pages.

My own rating for this plugin is four stars:

Starbox—four stars

3. About Author

The About Author plugin claims to “ display author’s information in style ”, with over 1,000 active installations at the time of writing, and rated four and a half stars.

About Author plugin for Wordpress

After installing and activating the plugin, I checked a test post, and there was no author description shown.

On clicking through to the settings from the plugins page after activating it, it’s not shown by default. Instead you have to select whether to show it on pages and/or posts.

About Author—select to show on pages or posts

Despite turning both options on, I still couldn’t see an author description on my test post.

On checking other settings, it invited me to select a template style by choosing a shortcode—but none were shown in the dropdown:

About Author—shortcode dropdown

This was getting a little frustrating, but then I noticed a menu for the plugin showing in the sidebar.

About Author - menu

I guessed I maybe had to add a shortcode, and then return to the Author Settings page to set it.

Before doing this though, I checked back with their plugin page to see if I’d missed some instructions.

According to the description, you need to add a shortcode to a post to get the author description to show.

About Author shortcode instruction

This wasn’t really what I was looking for— rather than have to remember to add a shortcode at the end of each and every post, it was far easier just to have an author box show up automatically as with the first two plugins above —but gave it a go.

About Author - shortcode

Still nothing showed.

So I added a shortcode via the menu link, stuck with all the defaults, saved it, and copied the shortcode provided.

About Author—saved shortcode

On adding this additional shortcode to the post, and selecting the shortcode in the Author Settings , I finally saw something—only now both shortcodes were active.

About Author - shortcodes displayed

After some further experimentation, to be honest, it just become increasingly frustrating to work with.

If I’d been using it for real, rather than trying to do a review, I would have abandoned it long before and moved to another that was easier to work with such as the two above.

As this didn’t do what I was looking for and was poorly designed, I can only give it one star:

About Author - rating one star

Additional Plugins

If the first two plugins above don’t meet what you’re looking for in terms of showing the author description on WordPress, there are others to choose from .

For example, you could try one with a good user base and lots of positive reviews, but has yet to be tested with the latest WordPress version.

To Conclude

As is usually the case with WordPress plugins, some are a lot better than others, and that’s certainly been the case here.

To show the author description on WordPress, if you can’t otherwise show it using your theme (as illustrated towards the start of this post), I'd recommend to:

  • Use the Simple Author Box plugin if you’re happy to just show the author description on posts, and don’t need it for pages.
  • Otherwise, to show it on both posts and pages, use the Starbox plugin.

Either way, adding an author bio helps your organic marketing while also building your relationship with readers.

Finally, take two secs to grab the free cheatsheet on showing the author description on WordPress so you have it to refer back to:

author biography on wordpress

@bySteveShaw

Steve Shaw is the founder of EverywhereMarketer , and has ran online businesses for over 20 years, serving over 13,000 customers in 137 countries. EverywhereMarketer helps you grow online visibility, attract more customers and grow your business across multiple channels.

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Simple Author Bio

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Simple Author Bio

This Plugin shows author’s biography in the foot of the posts, also adds social networks and a link to see all the entries written by the author.

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Intermediate, adding an author biography with the author bio wordpress plugin.

Adding an author biography is a great way to add personalization to your WordPress site . There are several plugins available that can add this functionality to your site. As an example, we'll use the Author Bio plugin we found in the plugins directory on the WordPress website. This particular plugin can even pull in the author's Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) image .

A Post Without a Biography

Here's an example of a post before we have added an author biography.

wp-author-bio-plugin-before

Not very exciting or personal. So, let's add that biography so our visitors can get to know us a little better.

Installing and Configuring the Author Bio Plugin

To begin, please search for and install the Author Bio WordPress plugin. If you're not familiar with how to install a WordPress plugin, please see our Searching for and Installing Wordpress Plugins article if you need any help with this step.

After we've installed our plugin, we'll want to navigate to the settings for this plugin ( Settings > Author Bio ). There are several settings you can adjust here, but for this example we want to make sure the option to "Show authors Gravatar" is selected. Feel free to try different settings and test them out on your site to find what works best for you.

wp-author-bio-settings

Since this plugin pulls the biography information from your WordPress user Biographical Info, we'll want to make sure it has the information we want to show on our site. Navigate to the Users area of your WordPress dashboard, view All Users and select the appropriate user to edit. Usually this will be the Administrator, but you can also set this up for multiple authors if you like.

wp-user-profile

Once you have made any needed updates to the user Biographical Info, click the Update Profile button to save your changes.

A Post With a Biography

Now let's see how our post looks with our new Author Bio plugin:

wp-author-bio-plugin-after

This adds a much more personal touch to our blog so our readers can get to know us a little better.

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author biography on wordpress

A Voyage Around the Queen: 'gloriously bizarre' royal biography

Craig Brown's book paints a 'vivid and remarkably telling' picture of Elizabeth II

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Elizabeth II.

As a "man who supposedly trades in throwaway wisecracks", you wouldn't think the satirist Craig Brown would be the person to "tell us something thought-provoking, perhaps even deep, about monarchy", said Stephen Smith in The Observer . Yet in his glorious new book – a follow-up to similar works about Princess Margaret and the Beatles – that's exactly what he does.

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It adds up to a "vivid and remarkably telling study of our late head of state". Brown has perhaps only one serious thesis, said Matthew Parris in Literary Review : "almost everyone, he says, goes slightly bonkers" in the Queen's presence. "We gabble, we dry up, we lose our thread, we gawp, we stammer." Kingsley Amis even avoided beans before meeting her, so anxious was he about farting or belching.

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Brown devotes a chapter to the "brisk dispatch with which she would terminate conversations". "How very interesting," she'd intone, before moving on. As much as this "wonderfully readable" book is about the Queen, it is also "about ourselves as a nation, reflected and refracted through our own relationships with one person".

"I enjoyed 'A Voyage Around the Queen ' so much that I wished it were longer than its 672 pages," said Christopher Howse in The Daily Telegraph . We learn that when Mahatma Gandhi sent Elizabeth a hand-woven tablecloth as a wedding gift, her grandmother, Queen Mary, declared it a "horrible thing", having mistaken it for one of his loincloths. When, at the beacon lighting for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, the officer in charge confided that "absolutely everything" had gone wrong, she replied: "Oh good. What fun!"

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Robert Caro Reflects on ‘The Power Broker’ and Its Legacy at 50

Caro’s book on Robert Moses, a city planner who reshaped New York, is also a reflection on “the dangers of unchecked power,” and remains more resonant and relevant than ever.

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The author Robert Caro photographed at the New-York Historical Society in profile, standing in front of materials that are part of a 50th anniversary exhibit about his book “The Power Broker.”

By Alexandra Alter

When Robert Caro was writing “The Power Broker,” his 1974 biography of the urban planner Robert Moses, he often heard a deflating refrain.

“I must have heard a hundred times, nobody’s going to read a book about Robert Moses,” Caro said on a recent morning. “And I really did believe what people said, that nobody would read the book. I did believe that.

“Now they tell me it’s in its 74th printing,” he added brightly. “That’s a lot of books.”

Five decades after its publication, “The Power Broker” endures as a revered classic, prized as much for its elegant, novelistic prose as its blunt lessons on the uses and abuses of political power. The book that Caro feared might never be published went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, sell hundreds of thousands of copies and influence generations of journalists, historians and politicians.

Now, in an astonishing turn for a 50-year-old book and its 88-year-old author, “The Power Broker” seems more popular and relevant than ever. Caro’s iconic portrait of Moses — a megalomaniacal city planner who reshaped New York City with his bridges and expressways, often destroying communities that stood in his way — has inspired video and board games , a Broadway play and a “ Repeal Robert Moses” movement, led by an organization that aims to reclaim the city from cars.

This year, “The Power Broker” is being celebrated with an installation at the New-York Historical Society, which features a selection of handwritten notes, photographs and edited manuscript pages from Caro’s archives. A viral podcast series about the book, created by the “99 Percent Invisible” host and “Power Broker” superfan Roman Mars, has drawn an enormous audience, with more than four million downloads. So far this year, “The Power Broker” — which spans 1,286 pages — has sold more than 40,000 copies, far outpacing its sales in recent years and beating many new releases. Some cultural critics have declared that 2024 is “the Year of ‘The Power Broker’.”

And the book’s audience will likely grow even more, with the release of the first ever digital edition of “The Power Broker” this month, on Sept. 16.

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  1. How to Add an Author Info Box in WordPress Posts (5 Ways)

    1-click Use in WordPress. Next, add the code directly to the 'Additional CSS' box. Then, click the 'Publish' button to make your changes live. Now, you can visit one of your WordPress blog posts and see your new author info box. Here is how the author bio box looked in our theme.

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    5. Molongui Authorship. Molongui Authorship is a great WordPress author bio box plugin that lets you display an author box, co-authors, and guest contributors. This plugin makes it easy to create author bios and guest author bios without creating a WordPress account.

  3. How to Add a WordPress Author Bio Box to Your Post (4 Ways)

    You can do this using the Post Author Block. After you've filled out the author's information in the user settings (as we did in the previous method), simply navigate to the post or page where you want to add a WordPress author bio. Click on the + icon to open up your blocks menu. Then, search for "post author:".

  4. How to Add an Author Bio to WordPress Posts

    4. Fill in the information for the plugin name and description. If you go to your plugin list, you should see this new one in the list. Next, we'll add some information to the plugin file. When we are finished, the bio box will appear below posts. Here's the information we're going to display: Author's name.

  5. How to Add a Author Bio Box to WordPress Posts

    Note: To take full advantage of this feature, make sure each author on your site has a completed bio. You can add this by going to the WordPress admin panel: 1. Navigate to Users > Profile. 2. Fill in the "Biographical Info" section with the author's bio. 3. Optionally, you can upload a profile picture by associating the email with a Gravatar ...

  6. 7 Best Author Bio Plugins for WordPress in 2024

    Demo & Download. 5. Avatar. Avatar is a powerful author bio solution for Elementor websites. It helps readers to know more about the authors and to contact them personally through social sites. The plugin has a block-based editor to add or remove sections like user picture, name, biography, icons, etc.

  7. How to Add a Professional Bio in WordPress with About Author

    Step 4: Add a New Author. Now you are ready to add a new author. This will be the first of many you add. Click on the "Add New" tab that is located on the left-side menu under the main plugin menu area. This takes you to the author bio page where you can add a new bio and create your first shortcode to display it.

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    5. Author Bio Box. Author Bio Box is a free WordPress plugin that displays author information below posts on your site. These author profiles can include a photo, relevant social media links, and a short description. The design of the author box is minimalist, ensuring that profiles don't distract from page content. 6.

  9. A Complete Guide To WordPress Author Pages And Templates

    Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating WordPress author pages: Make it visually appealing: Use high-quality images and designs to make the author page visually appealing and engaging for readers.; Include a brief biography: Provide a brief bio of the author, highlighting their skills and experience in the relevant field.; List articles written by the author: Include a list of all the ...

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    Check out our comprehensive list of the top free WordPress author bio box plugins on the market. Designing a Sexy Author Bio Feature. When it comes to designing an author bio, make sure to: Keep the article's author and readers satisfied by choosing specific design elements; Consider up and coming trends to make your author bios really stand out

  11. How to Add an Author Bio in WordPress Posts (Without a Plugin)

    Adding an author bio can significantly enhance your readers credibility and engagement. An author bio not only make an introduction with your readers to the person behind the content but also helps to built trust and a deeper connection. If you don't know how to add one, then you're in the right place. Here I'll show you how to display ...

  12. 8 Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins Compared for 2024

    Additionally, you can add tabs to your author box showing that writer's latest posts. It also integrates with WooCommerce for your online store. 6. Meks Smart Author Widget. Meks Smart Author Widget is a powerful WordPress plugin that lets you add an author bio to any widget-ready area of your WordPress website.

  13. 11 of the Best WordPress Author Bio Plugins

    Installing a WordPress author bio plugin is a straightforward process. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New. Search for the plugin you want to install, then click "Install Now ...

  14. How to Add an Author Bio Box to WordPress

    An author bio box in WordPress may not seem like a requirement for most situations. However, adding that personal element helps develop greater engagement from the reader. It also helps the author by establishing expertise. Discover more of what WordPress hosting can do for you and how it might enhance online success.

  15. Simple Author Box

    Description. Simple Author Box adds a responsive author box at the end of your posts, showing the author name, author gravatar and author description - author bio. It also adds over 30 social profile fields on WordPress user profile screen, allowing to display the author social icons in the author box.

  16. How To Add an Author Bio Box to Your WordPress Posts

    Next, we need to configure a few settings to make sure the author box shows after the content of your blog post. There are four setting we need to change according to the screenshot below: Rename the block of code to Author bio. Enable PHP code execution. Select After content for the insertion type. Save Settings 1 - 16.

  17. Post Author Biography block

    The Post Author Biography block allows you to embed a user's biography from the About Yourself section in Users > Profile into your page or post. In order to add a Post Author Biography block, click on the Block Inserter (+) icon. You can also type /Post Author Biography and hit enter in a new paragraph block to add one quickly.

  18. WordPress Author Pages: How to Make Custom Author Pages

    This is an author bio box, which opens an author page when the writer's name is clicked. Filled with some background about the author, maybe a photo, and a list of articles for which they contributed: ... name, description, total posts, and list of contributions. Here are some of the benefits of WordPress author pages: Contributors can ...

  19. How to Add an Author Box to WordPress Posts

    1. Choose a WordPress Theme with Author Boxes. One of the easiest ways to include author boxes on your website is to choose a theme that offers the option as a built-in feature. This is especially important if you have more than one author, as most themes only enable you to display boxes for a single writer.

  20. How To Create An Author Bio Section on WordPress Posts?

    In this article, we'll learn how to beautifully create an author bio section into your blog posts page for free using the WP Author Bio WordPress plugin in a...

  21. How to Show the Author Description on WordPress

    The following three plugins were the top three plugins listed on WordPress for 'author bio' that: Had at least 1,000 active installations. Were displayed as tested with either the latest WordPress version or the one before, showing they continued to be maintained (a t the time of writing, the most recent version had only been released a ...

  22. Simple Author Bio Plugin

    This Plugin shows author's biography in the foot of the posts, also adds social networks and a link to see all the entries written by the author.

  23. Adding an Author Biography with the Author Bio WordPress Plugin

    Adding an author biography is a great way to add personalization to your WordPress site. There are several plugins available that can add this functionality to your site. As an example, we'll use the Author Bio plugin we found in the plugins directory on the WordPress website. This particular plugin can even pull in the author's Gravatar ...

  24. A Voyage Around the Queen: 'gloriously bizarre' royal biography

    "I enjoyed 'A Voyage Around the Queen' so much that I wished it were longer than its 672 pages," said Christopher Howse in The Daily Telegraph.We learn that when Mahatma Gandhi sent Elizabeth a ...

  25. Robert Caro Reflects on 'The Power Broker' and Its Legacy at 50

    A former investigative reporter at Newsday who was born and raised in New York City, he received a yearlong Carnegie fellowship to work on a biography of Moses, and quickly ran out of money.