3 WordPress Plugins That Make Guest Posting Easier!

If you plan to start accepting guest contributions or launching a new collaborating blog with several co-authors, you may want to configure your WordPress blog to make your (and your contributors’) life easier.

Let’s call it “optimize your blog for guest posting” because an SEO will never die inside me

1. Easier Notifications

Peter’s Collaboration E-mails: This plugin makes it easier for both the blog owner and the contributor to keep updated on the guest post status:

• When a Contributor user submits an article for review: The plugin e-mails a list of approvers of your choice, letting them know that there is a post ready for review, and giving them a link to edit the post.
• When a post is approved: The Contributor user gets an e-mail saying that their post has been approved and who it was approved by. If the post was directly published, the author is given a link to read the post as the whole world sees it. If the post is scheduled to be published, the author is informed of the time that their post will go live. When the post does go live, the author will get another e-mail informing him / her of that.
• When a post’s status is changed back to “draft” from “pending”: The original Contributor user gets an e-mail saying that their post has been reverted back to a draft, along with a link to edit and re-submit the post.

A similar one: WP Status Notifier

2. Optimized Dashboard

Dashboard: Pending Review: This plugin creates a new widget for that dashboard that lists out posts pending review so you can see which posts you need to check out immediately after logging in.

3. Easier Discussion

Peter’s Post Notes for WordPress: this plugin allows to post quick private notes to go with posts. It is thus a very handy collaboration tool because an approver can suggest a quick fix, the collaborator can report a status or ask for the advice etc – and the whole conversation is forever saved with the post for you to refer to it whenever you need to.

The notes can be added right to the extra panel added to the sidebar (once you save the draft or publish the post, the note is saved as well). I wish there were a separate button to save the note though.

And here’s how the conversation history looks like:

Of course, these tips will only be helpful if your content management is run by WordPress, are you aware of other ways to accept guest posts that can be applied to other blogging platforms?

Are you using any WordPress plugins to make contributing to your blog a lot easier? Please share them!