PluginScout

Guest Author

by WebFactory · WordPress.org page · Website

v2.62 Tested up to WP 7.1 PHP 5.2.4+

Guest Author has 5,000+ active installs on WordPress.org and 80,200 downloads all time. We have tracked it since September 4, 2026; download trends appear after 30 days of data. The last update was on August 16, 2026, tested up to WordPress 7.1.

Guest Author at a glance

Active installs
5,000+
Total downloads
80,200
Downloads, last 30 days
–
available after 30 days of tracking
30-day growth
–
tracking since September 4, 2026

Is Guest Author well maintained?

Support threads resolved
No open threads
nothing waiting on the WordPress.org forum
WordPress compatibility
Current
tested up to WordPress 7.1, the current release is 7.1
One-star reviews
15%
2 of 13 reviews on WordPress.org

Features

The feature list from the plugin's own readme on WordPress.org, trimmed to the essentials.

  • ✍️ Behaves as if guest authors were regular authors
  • 👤 Upload your own avatar image instead of using Gravatar
  • 🌍 Link to a custom page for the guest author
  • 🔥 Perfect for guest posts

Guest Author reviews and ratings

13 reviews on WordPress.org, with the most recent ones as their authors posted them.

All reviews
4.2 out of 5

13 reviews

5★
9
4★
1
3★
1
2★
0
1★
2

  • Feature request: nofollow the guest author URL

    The plugin works as advertised and is quite simple and handy. I have one request though. These days nofollowing the URL might be suitable for some admins. So it is missing.

    Nima Shayanfar

  • Personal URL not working

    My site use the themes “Twenty Twenty-Two”. Custom URLs will not appear on the name.

    Jin-Liang, Lin

  • Close to perfection

    Its good, but didnt save the guest data so i have to write the same data over and over again

    gunawan004

  • Support only Free themes

    They don't test their plugin with the best/higest selling premium themes, so they have zero clue if their plugin with work with those themes or not. They just blindly hope that their plugin works and if it doesn't, it's the Theme's fault only.

    dhirajshah

  • Works as described

    I am mostly writing this review to counter what was written here: crudoadmin — March 5, 2021 — Its a piece of junk In my experience, the URL, Description and Avatar boxes are only greyed out if you haven't yet added an Author Name. If that first field (Name) is empty, then the other fields are disabled. This is to prevent people adding data to those other fields without providing an author name. Makes perfect sense to me. I suspect "crudoadmin" might not have taken the time to really test out what was going on. As for the plug-in itself ... works well. Out theme was even able to pull in the image, URL, and description (in the same way it pulls in the image, URL, and Bio from a registered user/author). Which means this plug-in is storing that info in standard Wordpress fields, as opposed to making something up (which was the case with the Simply Guest Author plug-in, which we had to ditch for that very reason).

    inspired888

  • Its a piece of junk

    It only allows to change Author to Guest and ad a name to the author, but it does not allow to add an Avatar (it's greyed out) nor a url (it's also greyed out) and in the post the "guest Author" name is not shown correctly but instead it shows the website's admin user.

    crudoadmin

Guest Author alternatives

Plugins that solve the same problem, ranked by how closely they overlap with Guest Author.

Details

Add a guest author to any post without needing to register the guest author as a user on your site.

The full description, screenshots and every review live on the WordPress.org page.

Tags

  • author
  • guest
  • guest author
  • guest post
  • post author

More from WebFactory

Version
2.62
Last updated
Aug 16, 2026
First published
Mar 14, 2018
Requires WordPress
4.6
Tested up to
7.1
Requires PHP
5.2.4
Pricing
Free on WordPress.org

Guest Author FAQ

What does Guest Author do?

According to its WordPress.org readme, Guest Author offers ✍️ Behaves as if guest authors were regular authors, 👤 Upload your own avatar image instead of using Gravatar, 🌍 Link to a custom page for the guest author and 🔥 Perfect for guest posts.

How many active installs does Guest Author have?

WordPress.org reports 5,000+ active installs for Guest Author as of September 7, 2026.

Is Guest Author still maintained?

Yes. The last release was on August 16, 2026 and it is tested up to WordPress 7.1.

Is Guest Author free?

Guest Author is free to install from WordPress.org. Many plugins also sell a paid version or add-ons.