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WordPress Author Pages: How to Make Custom Author Pages

Last Updated on December 26th, 2023

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Do you need to highlight an author listing page of your multi-author WordPress website? Then you need to create a customized WordPress authors page to list writers, team members, contributors, or any other type of participants.

By an “author” we mean one of the default WordPress user roles as well as user profiles, you can create manually with intuitive tools. Either way, you can display a list of authors in WordPress with their bio, photos (Gravatars), and optionally social media links.

If you want to skip manual tinkering with the wp_list_authors template tag and the need to add custom commands manually, you can create a list of contributors, authors, staff writers, or other project members with different plugins.

So there are two ways to showcase authors on your WordPress website without a need to dig into WP functions.

  1. Automatically. In this case, you can use a plugin that generates a shortcode to automatically fetch data for a list of authors with their Gravatars, names, and other important details they/you added to their profiles. The main benefit of this solution is that you can set it up fast. Dedicated WordPress plugins that are actively maintained and supported are in short supply. We’re going to give a test-run to each of them.
  2. Manually. You can create a customized list of authors by adding text, photos, and other details manually with any team showcase/member/user profile WordPress plugin. It will take more time, but usually, such plugins offer better design solutions.

It’s worth mentioning that the majority of the WordPress author listing plugins in the collection lacks deep Gutenberg adaptation. Also, it seems that so far, no dedicated Gutenberg block would output user profiles by a user role and would also offer any extra customization options. So WordPress Gutenberg add-on creators, who would be the first?

Authors List

authors list wp plugin - create author page wordpress

This plugin provides probably the most straightforward way to generate the list of authors with a single shortcode. It supports different user roles, so you can automatically create a list of WordPress authors, contributors, editors, or any other roles with the opportunity to exclude a specific user role or individual IDs.

Upon the plugin installation, you need to insert the [authors_list] shortcode to the page where you want all the existing WordPress user profiles to appear.

The plugin ships with an extensive list of attributes to customize the shortcode: for example, set the number of columns if you want to display users in a grid, show or hide any specific info like bio or links, etc.

list authors plugin - create author page wordpress

It’s also possible to set a custom order for the author profile elements, such as avatar, link, bio, title, etc. If you want to go further and improve the permalinks of your authors’ pages, you might want to give a try to the Edit Author Slug plugin.

You can have it plain simple or a bit more sophisticated. For instance, you can have room for bio info if there are not a lot of users:

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bio list authors - create author page wordpress

The plugin creators also provide a few custom ready-to-go shortcode examples to help you find the most appropriate look for the list of authors.

Get Authors List

Author Avatars List

author avatars list - create author page wordpress

This plugin is based on the WordPress core template functions to fetch data for a list of authors. That means you can automatically showcase authors or contributors using existing data of your registered WordPress users.

The plugin uses a simple [authoravatars] shortcode that you can either paste as it is or update with custom values in Gutenberg.

You may selectively output Gravatars/profiles of any specific user role, not just authors. Tweaking the shortcode, you’re also free to limit the number of users/avatars, designate custom avatar size, setup alignment, etc.

author avatar list

You may also showcase the listing of authors in the sidebar of your WordPress website using widgets.

author avatar list widget - create author page wordpress

For example, let’s add the Author Avatars List widget to the footer area of the default WordPress 2020 theme:

blog authors

Another exciting advantage of this plugin is that it can retrieve data from user profiles managed through Co-Author Plus, Ultimate Member, BBpress, and BuddyPress plugins.

Get Author Avatar List

About Author

about author wp plugin - create author page wordpress

This is one of those plugins that won’t do the job automatically but will be helpful if you are okay with the manually created directory of humans behind your articles.

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author box settings

The free version comes with a few templates and a huge customization panel, where you can tailor anything about the author’s profile: colors, fonts, sizes, image style, social links, etc.

customization settings

The default templates contain a little too much styling, but still, you can create clean-looking layouts by altering the fonts, colors, and a background image.

author box plugin

On the cons side, you can’t include links directly to the posts of any author. If you have a few authors you want to feature, you’ll need to manually add each of them and then display their ‘profiles’ on any page with a shortcode. The Pro version supports an out-of-box multiple author layout, animation effects, widgets, more custom author details, and more.

Get About Author

Author Lists

author lists plugin

This premium plugin is designed to help you, list authors, in WordPress using a list, grid, or carousel layout. The plugin can boast of high user-friendliness, agility, and slick design.

You may selectively customize who to show in the list by the user role or user ID, set custom size and shape for avatars, and preferably order the list.

author lists plugin widget

As a result, you’ll get a perfectly organized custom list of the website authors.

author lists plugin wordpress

Thanks to the advanced sorting options, you can showcase author profiles based on the post count, alphabetical order, or user roles, giving you more flexibility as to what authors must be shown first.

Get Author Lists

Meks Smart Author Widget

Meks Smart Author Widget

Meks Smart Author Widget is a tiny helpful plugin capable of detecting the post authors automatically to display them in a WordPress widget. You can customize the avatar size and link the profile to the author’s page. You may also display the widget in any post or archive template. Although it doesn’t provide you with an option to create a dedicated listing of authors, you can additionally bring individual authors into the spotlight.

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Get Meks

Feature authors within the membership community

If you are looking to feature authors/users of your on-site membership community, you’d want to go with the all-around Membership WordPress plugin. Here are a few decent examples that allow you to build huge communities of registered users with tons of social, e-commerce, and communication features:

  1. Profile Builder is one of the top-used, actively maintained plugins for creating user profiles on your WordPress website.
  2. Youzer is one of the best-in-class premium membership plugins that allows for all types of member directories and listings inside a community website.
  3. UserPRO has all you need to set up an on-site social network and showcase user profiles.

Conclusion: How to create an author listing page for your WordPress blog

If you need to better display and organize a list of authors in WordPress, you can do that without stress with a single plugin and a few button clicks. Some plugins allow you to create a listing for multiple authors in WordPress right away; others are focused on showcasing individual authors. Have you used any of them? Which one can you recommend? Don’t hesitate to share your experience.

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.