The good news is that there are great plugins that can make your workflow a lot more easier and take away all the drudgery of managing a multi-author site. In this article I have compiled a list of thirteen of the very best of them. All the plugins listed here are free and can be installed from the Official WordPress repository

1. Edit Flow

Edit flow is one of the most important plugins one can have on a multi-user WordPress site. In fact it’s what we use here at MTE to organize all our writers’ content. Edit Flow allows you to set custom statuses for your content and adds a section for private comments between editors and contributors within the post, thus improving collaboration within the WordPress dashboard. The plugin also comes with a visual calender for scheduling your content. Do note that the development of Edit Flow has stopped, and there have not been any new releases since December 2013. However, it is still working well in the latest version of WordPress.

2. Capability Manager Enhanced

Capability Manager Enhanced is a very useful plugin for managing user roles on your WordPress site. It is particularly useful when you have authors as well as editors working on your content. You can create and customize new roles for a specific set of users as well as edit the capabilities of existing users.

3. Editorial Calender

Editorial Calender is another plugin that provides a calender outlook for your posts. It provides you with a much better overview of your content to see upcoming and scheduled posts. While Edit Flow also offers similar features, Editorial Calender is more polished, and there are more options to work with. One thing I find particularly useful is the ability to create post drafts right from within the calender and move them around from day to day. Note: Editorial Calendar is not compatible with version 0.8.0 of Edit Flow. You have to downgrade to version 0.7.4 of Edit Flow for Editorial Calendar to work.

4. Post Forking

Post Forking boosts collaboration between writers by allowing users to “fork” a post and create an alternate version. Similar to Git’s pull request feature, this plugin will allow your users to submit proposed revisions for an article, so you can choose whether to use the forked version as the new post or simply select some parts of it.

5. Post Status Notifier Lite

This plugin does a very simple job, and that is to notify your users of activity on their posts. So whether you need your editor to review and publish a post as soon as possible or whether you want a to notify a contributor that his/her post needs amendment, this plugin will do the hard work of notifying the relevant persons concerned via email.

6. Co-authors Plus

Co-authors Plus allows you to assign multiple authors to one post. If, for example, you have two writers working on an article, you can use this plugin to credit both writers when the article goes live. The plugin even allows you to add guest writers to a post without necessarily creating a new WordPress account.

7. Adminize

Sometimes there are unnecessary items in your dashboard that the users of your site do not need to see or use. Adminize makes it easy to hide items from view on the WordPress dashboard based on the user’s role providing a minimal and clutter-free display which will enable authors or contributors to concentrate on the good stuff.

8.Good Writer Checkify

This plugin is especially fantastic for websites who bring new writers in often. Training writers to write the right way for your website is not without its challenges, and that’s where Good Writer Checkify can help. It allows you to add your own set of rules or guidelines in the post area so your writers won’t miss them and will improve their articles to the required standard.

9. WP Author Box Lite

WP Autho Box Lite is a useful plugin for embedding an author bio at the top or bottom of a post. This plugin includes the option to feature the latest posts and multiple social media profiles which could help increase engagement. What’s more, you can customize Author Box Lite to fit the color scheme of your website, and you don’t have to worry about responsiveness, as it looks great on mobile phones, tablets and desktop or laptop computers.

10. Post Profit Stats

Post Profit Stats is a revenue sharing plugin that lets you calculate the exact amount to pay your writers based on their pageviews. You can simply add the amount per view you want to pay your writers, and the plugin will calculate the total number of views each post receives and multiply it by that amount.

11. Front End PM

Front End PM adds a direct messaging system to your WordPress website for the users of your site, allowing them to send a message to each other directly. This plugin works from the front end of your website (and not the dashboard), giving people who do not have access to your admin area (such as guest writers) access to this private message system regardless. There are plenty of customization options for admins, so feel free to check it out if you need a messaging system on your website.

12. WP User Front-End

This plugin gives you the ability to manage your editorial team right from the front end of your website, so users do not need to enter the admin area to create new posts or upload attachments. Users can also view and edit their profiles from the custom dashboard and get notifications on activity on their posts.

As the name implies, this plugin gives you the ability to restrict the users of your website from publishing a post without adding a feature image. So perhaps your users fail to add a featured image when saving a draft; this plugin will continue to remind them until they fulfill this requirement.

Which of the above plugins do you use to manage your multi-author blog?