Cite This Article – Author Box & Citation

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Cite This Article helps online publishers give readers a reliable way to cite and credit their work. Built for academic, medical, research-heavy, journalistic, and other multi-author or source-driven websites, it adds author information and ready-to-use article citations directly to WordPress posts.

🎯 Use it in three ways:

• Author box only — publish author names, bios, images, and multiple- or guest-author information without displaying an article citation.
• Author box + citation — combine author information with a reader-facing Cite This Article panel.
• Citation only — publish the article citation on its own when your site already has its own author presentation.

Build author boxes for single- or multiple-author posts, add guest authors without creating WordPress accounts, use local images from the WordPress Media Library, or automatically resolve authors and guest authors from Co-Authors Plus.

Authors can appear together in one combined author box or in individual author cards, with their own bios and images where available.

Each author box can include a Cite This Article panel where readers can copy a formatted article citation or export the article to their reference manager.

👤 Author Box

Cite This Article builds an author bio box from WordPress author profiles, with native support for multiple authors rather than requiring a particular multi-author plugin.

Multiple authors can come from manual entry, a supported author integration, or the standard WordPress post author. Manual authors can also be used as guest authors when you need to credit a contributor without creating a WordPress user account.

Authors can be displayed together in one combined author box or as separate individual author cards. Individual cards can use each author’s own avatar and biography, while one shared citation continues to represent the complete article and all of its authors.

Author-box presentation remains separate from the author data used to generate the article citation, so changing a bio or display setting does not replace the citation author list.

Author Box Features

• Native multiple-author support — no multi-author plugin required
• Guest authors without WordPress accounts
• Combined author box or individual author cards
• Automatic use of WordPress author profiles and bios
• Automatic Co-Authors Plus author and guest-author support
• WordPress profile avatars and local images from the Media Library
• Per-author bio and description overrides
• Horizontal and vertical author box layouts
• Single/group image, individual images, or no-image display
• Round or square author images
• Small, medium, and large avatar sizing
• “More from …” links to each author’s other posts, including Co-Authors Plus guest authors
• Lightweight front-end output with no external framework dependency

📋 Cite This Article

The reader-facing Cite This Article panel turns the finished WordPress article into something readers can identify, cite, and save more reliably. It generates a citation for the current article covering all resolved authors and remains shared when those authors are displayed as separate individual cards.

Readers can copy the citation in one click or export it as BibTeX, RIS, or CSL-JSON for their reference manager. Citations can render in house, APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard style, with an optional reader-facing style switcher.

The plugin can also output citation-aware page metadata so reference managers such as Zotero can recognize and save published articles more accurately.

Cite This Article Features

• Ready-to-use article citations for readers
• One-click citation copying
• House, APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard citation styles
• Optional reader-facing style switcher
• BibTeX, RIS, and CSL-JSON exports for reference managers
• Citation-aware page metadata
• Complete article citations for multiple-author posts
• Standalone article citation for sites that already have their own author box
• Article citation overrides for authors, title, URL, publication date, and site name
• Organizational author support
• Gutenberg support for both the author box and standalone article citation

🧩 Author Schema

Cite This Article can describe each article’s authors in schema.org structured data, using the same authors the author box shows: multiple authors, guest authors, and organizations included.

It’s off by default. Tick “Enable author schema” in the settings, and a schema block describing the article and its authors is added to the same content types as the citation metadata. Untick it, and nothing is added.

🗂️ Author Box Archive Pages

Author archive pages can open with the author’s profile: photo, bio, website, and number of posts. Tick “Show the author profile in the author archive header” in the settings. The “Author: Name” heading becomes the author’s name, and the profile sits beneath it. Your theme’s post list, pagination, and layout are left as they are.

It works with block themes and classic themes, and with Co-Authors Plus guest-author archives. The archive version never includes a citation, since an archive is a changing list of posts rather than a single article.

To place the profile yourself, use the Author Archive Header block in your author template, or call citekit_abc_author_archive_header() in a classic theme’s author.php. A page never shows more than one profile header. Themes that place it themselves can declare add_theme_support( 'citekit-author-archive' ) to turn the automatic placement off.

🔌 Integrations

Co-Authors Plus

Co-Authors Plus is supported automatically.

When Co-Authors Plus is active, Cite This Article can use all authors assigned to the post, including guest authors, guest-author avatars, and guest-author descriptions. Authors can appear together or as individual cards, and every resolved author is included in the article citation.

If Co-Authors Plus is not installed, Cite This Article continues to work with its native multiple-author and guest-author handling and the standard WordPress author system.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What is an author box?

An author box is a section of a WordPress post or article that identifies the person or people who wrote it. It commonly includes an author name, author bio, profile image, and other author information.

Cite This Article adds those author-box features while also providing an optional reader-facing article citation.

Can I use it just as an author bio box?

Yes. Cite This Article can be used as a WordPress author bio box with the author’s name, biography, and profile image. The citation functionality is optional.

Does Cite This Article support multiple authors?

Yes. Multiple authors are supported natively and can be entered manually or resolved automatically from WordPress or a supported author integration.

Can I add guest authors without creating WordPress accounts?

Yes. Manual guest authors can be added without creating WordPress user accounts. Cite This Article also supports guest authors supplied by integrations such as Co-Authors Plus.

Can I use the citation without the author box?

Yes. Cite This Article can publish the article citation on its own for sites that already have their own author presentation.

Does it add author schema for SEO?

Yes, if you turn it on. Author schema is off by default. Once enabled, it lists every author of the article, with their author page, bio, and website.

Can the author box appear on author archive pages?

Yes. Turn on “Show the author profile in the author archive header” and each author’s archive page opens with their profile, without the citation. Your theme keeps its own post list and layout.

Where can I find documentation?

Start with the Cite This Article documentation. See Multiple Authors and Layout & Styling for additional guidance.

⚙️ Try These Free Tools from CiteKit

Create and manage references throughout your publishing workflow with CiteKit’s free web tools. Generate citations and bibliographies, organize references, check citation links, and create structured citation data for published content, all within your browser.

• Bibliography Generator
• Citation Generator
• Citation Link Checker
• Citation Schema Generator
• Reference Library