How to Add a WordPress Author Box to Your Blog Posts – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

So you’re interested in adding an author box to your WordPress blog? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

An author box is a section of your blog home page that displays some information about you, the author.

There are many themes and plugins out there that allow you to display an author box on your website without getting into any coding. But fear not; we cover how to add an author box with code also if that’s more your style.

In this article, we’ll look at 3 ways to display an author box on your site step by step.

To help you out, we’ve created this table of contents so you can jump straight to the section you want:

If you haven’t created your site yet, then consider checking out this article on how to start a WordPress blog before getting started!

What Is an Author Box?

An author box is a section that shows up at the bottom of a blog post that tells you a bit about the author. It’s a great idea to make use of author boxes if your site has many writers.

Typically an author box shares interesting information about the author such as:

Name
Position
Social media links
Image

…and sometimes even things like:

Age
Hobbies
Recent work
Author website

This feature can be pretty robust or simple and basic depending on your needs. It all comes down to personal preference and the feel of your website.

WPHacks, for example, only displays the author’s picture and name. And the name links to the author’s page on the website showing you a collection of the author’s work on WPHacks. Pretty cool, right?

Benefits of an Author Box

If you’re running a WordPress blog, but you’re the only writer, then it may be more beneficial just to create an about page with your likeness on it.

However, if you have a lot of authors on your site publishing content, being able to put a face to an author is an excellent way to work towards creating good relationships with readers.

Having an author box is also a great way of giving your writers credit for their work, while also showing their credentials and position within the publication. Plus, it opens the door to having more guest writers write for your site.

How to Add an Author Box

There are three methods for adding a WordPress author box to your website. They include using a theme, code, or a plugin.

The most popular and straightforward method for adding a WordPress author box is to use a plugin.

In addition, a lot of themes, especially those designed for blogging, support author boxes without needing to install any plugins. However, you’ll be limited when it comes to customizations, making this method less popular than using a feature-packed plugin.

Lastly, you can always add a WordPress author box to your website using code if that’s something you like to do.

So, let’s take a look at each method.

1. Use a Theme to Add a WordPress Author Box

If your site supports this method, the good news is it’s pretty simple to set up and get working.

First, you need to make sure your theme supports adding a WordPress author box. It may be as simple as toggling on the author box. Or, if you’re really lucky, an author box may come by default with your theme.

The easiest way to tell is to create a blog post and publish it. If there’s information at the bottom like you saw earlier for WPHacks, then you’re in luck. You’re theme supports author boxes.

To start, go to your WordPress dashboard. You can get there by adding ‘/wp-admin’ to the end of your site URL.

Once you’re there, select Users. Next, hover over the user you want to add information about. When you see the “Edit” button, click it.

This takes you to their user profile. From here, scroll down until you get to the “Biographical Info” section. Enter whatever info you want to show up in your author box and then save it.

If you don’t find any sign of an author box here, the next step is to look at the customization settings in the Live Theme Customizer to see if there’s a section that allows you to display this information.

To do this, start by clicking Appearance > Customize > Theme Options.

Then, select the checkbox that toggles the WordPress author box on or off.

This is what it looks like if you’re using the Twenty Twenty theme.

It’s as easy as that. While not all themes support this functionality, the ones that do make adding an author box easy.

2. Use a Plugin to Add a WordPress Author Box

Using a plugin is by far the most popular way to add an author box on your WordPress website. Not to mention, many author box plugins are free to use.

We are going to use one of the most popular author box plugins, Author Bio Box. This plugin allows you to customize a variety features you want in your author box to make it feel like a perfect fit for your site.

To start, click on the link above or go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashbard. Then, search for “Author Bio Box.” The result should be the first one to come up, and the author should be ThematoSoup. Install and activate this plugin.

If you’ve never installed a plugin before or need a recap, here’s an excellent guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve done that, your plugin is now active on your website. Check out one of your posts (at the bottom) to see your new shiny author box.

Now that you’ve gotten this plugin running correctly, it’s time to check out where you can customize it.

Go to Settings in your WordPress dashboard and click “Author Bio Box” heading.

When you do, you’ll see the settings page for the plugin. Here you can change display options like the color schemes, border size, and other stylistic options.

Keep in mind, you cannot add display information in the settings section of Author Bio Box. You can only customize the visual appeal of it.

If you want to add more information to your WordPress author box, go to Users > All Users then select the profile you want to edit.

Here you’ll see fields such as biographical information, social media networks, and image.

For example, if I add my YouTube channel link to my contact info then it will also add it to the author box!

It’s an intuitive system that works well!

3. Add a WordPress Author Box Using Code

There might come a time when you prefer to add code to your website. If that’s the case, keep reading.

To add an author box to your WordPress site using code, we’re going to add a rather large block of code to our functions.php file. Doing this will add a WordPress author box to the bottom of your posts.

To start, go to Appearance > Theme Editor in the WordPress dashboard.

Next, you’ll want to find the single.php file. This file should be around the top of the file explorer in the Theme Editor.

If you don’t have a single.php file, then check for an index.php file instead.

Next, copy this code and paste it outside of a function in your single.php file:

<div id="author-info">
  <div id="author-avatar">
    <?php echo get_avatar(
    get_the_author_meta('user_email'), '80', '' ); ?>
  </div>
  <div id="author-description">
    <h3><?php the_author_link(); ?></h3>
    <?php the_author_meta('description'); ?>
  </div>
</div>

This can be a little bit tricky, and if you’re not careful you could break your site. So, only attempt this method if you’re comfortable editing code on your site. In addition, make sure you create a backup of your site before making any changes to your site’s code.

And if you really want to be careful, we suggest using a child theme anytime you want to mess with code on your site.

Once you’ve added the code to the correct file, the next thing is to add CSS. You’ll do this by first going to the style.css file and adding the following code.

/* Author Box */

#author-info { float: left; padding: 20px;background-color: #f0f0f0; margin-bottom:10px; -moz-border-radius: 5px;border-radius: 5px;} 

#author-info .avatar { position: relative; top: 0; left: 0; float: left; } 

#author-description { margin-left: 100px; } 

#author-description h3 { margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:10px;}

Adding this code styles the author box you’ve created with the previous code added to the single.php file.

This method is viable; however, it is rather complicated. It can cause problems that require troubleshooting, so do be patient and prepared to work through it if things don’t work to start.

Wrapping Up

In the end, the plugin method is by far the most common and favorite amongst WordPress users for adding a WordPress author box to a website. Using the plugin method not only allows you to create an awesome author box for your WordPress site, but it also allows you to do it quickly and easily.

With that said, the other two methods are still viable options, so if it’s something you’re more interested in, then try them out.

If you’re looking for more ways to level up your WordPress website, then removing the “proudly powered by WordPress” footer link from your site could be a significant cosmetic upgrade for your website!

Have you ever created a WordPress author box for your website? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

The post How to Add a WordPress Author Box to Your Blog Posts appeared first on WPHacks.