How to Create an Author Box in WordPress?

The best thing about the WordPress site is that it’s easily customizable.

You don’t need to hire a web specialist as there are people who just give lessons on this complicated CMS.

So, what is an author box? What should it look like? How to create an Author Box in WordPress?

What is Author Box?

A WordPress author box is a website widget that displays the name and image of the blog owner.

The author box is a tabbed layout widget that links the page author’s name and/or avatar to the author’s social media profile or posts.

This can be situated at the top of the blog post, bottom, right or sidebar. 

An Author Box goes in the sidebar, usually under contributors. It’s where you put essential information for people who are writing a blog post.

Some common information to put in the Author box includes your name, Social links, email address, etc.

How to create an Author Box in WordPress?

Manually:

Creating an author box manually is not recommended for beginners because you need to add some codes to your theme.

Which may cause issues if you did wrong. Obviously, you can backup your site before doing any changes to your themes code.

But if you are not familiar with PHP then don’t do this.

Plugin:

It’s a recommended and easy way to create an author box on your WordPress website.

You just need to install a plugin, do some settings and done.

Multipurpose Themes:

Some multipurpose themes like Themify Ultra have inbuilt options to create an Author Box on your website.

You can easily create and place the author box at any place you want.

But today we are going to share the easiest method to create an Author Box in WordPress,” by using a plugin “

Plugin: Simple Author Box

Active Installations: 50k+

Author: Webfactory LTD.

Steps to create an Author Box in WordPress

1. Install Simple Author Box Plugin

Login – Dashboard – Plugins – Add new – Search – Author Box – Simple Author Box – Install – Activate.

Now visit the settings section,

Dashboard – Appearance – Simple Author Box

2. Settings

Before starting, let me clear you that this is a freemium plugin which means you can use this plugin for free,

but for more features, you need to purchase their premium version.

However, you can easily create an Author Box using their free version.

So there is no need to purchase the premium version until you want a specific feature.

So let’s start with the free version settings,

3. Visibility

Manually Insert the Simple Author Box:

When turned ON, the author box will no longer be automatically added to your post.

You’ll need to manually add it using shortcodes or a PHP function.

But we recommend disabling this as we don’t want to insert it manually.

Hide the author box if the author description is empty:

When turned ON, the author box will not appear for users without a description. 

In simple, if you create a new user/existing user without any description then the author box will not appear on your website.

So disable this option.

Hide the author box on archives:

When turned ON, the author box will be removed from the archives.

If you enable this option then the author box will not appear on archive pages like categories, tags etc.

4. Elements

Show author email: Enable

Displays your email address on your author box.

Open social icon links in a new tab: Enable

When someone clicks on your social links then a new tab will open.

This will help your visitors to stay on your site as well as check your profile in a new tab.

Hide the social icons on the author box:

If you don’t want to display your social profiles or your guest author’s social profile links then enable this option.

5. Appearance

You can change the appearance of your Author box here. Like margins, borders, padding etc. 

Show author website:

When turned ON, the author box will include the author’s website. 

Open author website link in a new tab: Enable

If you check this, the author’s link will open in a new tab.

Add the “nofollow” attribute on the author website link:

Enable this if you want to make the author’s website have the no-follow parameter added.

Author website position:

Select where you want to show the website link address ( left or right ).

Social icons type:

Select how you want to display your social links – coloured or symbols only.

Social icons style:

Choose the style of your social icons between circles or squares.

Rotate effect on social icons hover (works only for circle icons):

Add a rotate effect when someone hovers over to your social icons.

Use flat long shadow effect:

Check this if you want a flat shadow for social icons

Show a thin border on coloured social icons:

Enable if you want to add a border to the social icon’s container.

6. Author Box Tabs

This option is for premium users. You need to purchase their pro version to use these settings.

7. Colors

Here you can make your box colour appearance according to you.

We are using different colours related to our theme, you can also use any colour as per your needs.

8. Typography

In this option, you can select your font style, font size, social icons size etc.

9. Guest Author

This one is also for premium users. To use this option you need to purchase their pro version.

10. Advanced

To import, export or reset your settings, you can use this option. But this is used only by their premium users. So leave it.

Load generated inline style to the footer:

This option is useful ONLY if you run a plugin that optimizes your CSS delivery or moves your stylesheets to the footer, to get a higher score on speed testing services.

However, the plugin style is loaded only on a single post and a single page.

Custom CSS:

If you want to change the appearance of your author box beyond provided options, add custom CSS here.

Wrapping up

In this guide, we explained how to create an author box in WordPress.

Using a simple author box plugin you can easily create and customize your author box.

By default, the author box will display after content, but you can change the position by purchasing their pro version.

Having issues, comment below, and I will answer your doubts ASAP.

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