Have you ever seen websites that allow users to submit posts or other type of content anonymously?
Do you want to enable anonymous guest posting on your blog?
In this article, we’ll show you how to allow anonymous guest posting on your WordPress blog.
Click Here to Make Your Anonymous Guest Post Form Now
Here’s a table of contents to help you navigate this tutorial:
- Create a WordPress Form
- Enable Anonymous Guest Posting
- Configure Your Form’s General Settings
- Allow Post Submissions
- Add Your Form to Your Site
Why Enable Anonymous Guest Posting on Your Blog
So there are a few different reasons why you’d want to let people post anonymously on your blog:
- You have the type of website where you want to protect user privacy
- You’ll get higher engagement from your audience
- You can get more people to submit blog posts if they know it’ll be anonymous
- There will be a variety of content for you to post
So now that you know why you might want to allow anonymous guest posting on your blog, let’s take a look at exactly how to do.
How to Enable Anonymous Guest Posting on Your Blog
Follow these step by step instructions to allow people to post anonymous guest posts on your site.
Step 1: Create a WordPress Form
So the first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step by step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Next, you’ll need to install and activate the Post Submissions addon so users can submit blog posts on your website.
To do this, go to WPForms » Addon and find the one labeled Post Submissions.
Now, click Install Addon and then Activate.
And next you’ll need to create a new form.
To do this, go to WPForms » Add New, name your form, and choose the Blog Post Submission Form template.
And WPForms will create a form for you!
Also, you’ll notice your blog post submissions form has the following form fields:
- Author Details. This includes name, email, and author bio form fields.
- Create a Blog Post. This includes post title, post content, featured image, post excerpt, and category form fields.
You can add additional fields by dragging them from the left hand panel to the right hand panel.
Then, click on the field to make any changes. You can also click on a form field and drag it to rearrange the order on your user registration form.
Step 2: Enable Anonymous Guest Posting
Now before you save the changes you’ve made to your blog post submissions form, you’ll need to enable anonymous guest posting.
So to do this, click on the Name form field on your form. And then, in the left hand side of the Form Editor, find the box labeled Required and unclick it.
Now by doing this, anyone can submit your blog post submission form on your website without having to fill out the name form field.
Click Save.
Also, if you want to learn more about how to customize your blog post submissions form, check out this article outlining how to allow users to submit blog posts on your WordPress website. You’ll also find tips in our guide to accepting posts for an event calendar.
Step 3: Configure Your Form’s General Settings
There are many general settings to configure on a WordPress form:
- General Settings: Here you can change things like your form’s name, description, and submit button copy. You can also enable additional spam prevention features to keep your website secure from unwanted form submissions.
- Form Confirmations: Form confirmations are messages that display to site visitors once they submit a blog post for your website. WPForms has three confirmation types to choose from: Message, Show Page, and Redirect. To choose more than one form confirmation at a time, check out this helpful tutorial on how to create multiple form confirmations.
- Form Notifications: Notifications are a great way to send an email whenever a form is submitted on your website. A notification will automatically send to your once a form is submitted on your site. You can also send one to the site visitor that submitted the form and anyone else that needs to be notified of a form submission. To learn how to do this, read here about creating multiple form notifications.
Click Save.
Step 4: Allow Post Submissions
To allow anonymous guest post submissions on your blog, go to Settings » Post Submissions and turn Post Submissions “On”.
Next, make sure all the dropdown menu items match up to the form field title found above each dropdown menu. If you changed or added any new form fields, you’ll need to match them up with the corresponding custom fields for your posts.
- Title: the title of the blog post
- Content: the main body of the blog post
- Excerpt: a short summary of the blog post
- Featured Image: the image added to the beginning of the blog post
- Type: options include Posts or Pages, but can include custom post types as well
- Status: the status you want each blog post to be in when submitted. You can automatically publish all post submissions or require approval before being published to your website.
- Author: choose an author of the blog post. If you require users to login before submitting blog post submission forms, the signed in user will be assigned as the author. Since you’re allowing anonymous guest posting, if a site visitor doesn’t enter a name, the post author will remain blank.
At the bottom of this screen, you’ll see a section called Custom Post Meta. This lets you map fields on your guest post submission form to custom fields in WordPress. If you’d like to try it out, check out our tutorial on using custom fields in user submitted posts.
Click Save.
Step 5: Add Your Form to Your Site
After you’ve created your blog post submissions form, you need to add it to your WordPress website.
WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets.
To begin, create a new page or post in WordPress, or go to the update settings on an existing one. After that, click inside the first block (the blank area below your page title) and click on the Add WPForms icon.
The handy WPForms widget will appear inside your block. Click on the WPForms dropdown and pick the form you’ve just created and that you want to insert into your page.
Now, click Preview, and you’ll see your WordPress race form as it will appear on your website. If you’re satisfied with the way your WordPress form looks, go ahead and click on Publish and your form will go live on the Internet.
Take a look at your published page to see exactly how it looks on your website!
To view your WordPress anonymous guest posting form entries after they’ve been submitted, check out this complete guide to form entries. Also, if you want to see where people are submitting from, check out the Geolocation addon.
Click Here to Make Your Anonymous Guest Post Form Now
In Conclusion
And there you have it! You now know how to enable anonymous guest posting on your blog.
To get more content on your blog, see our tips on how to get more guest post submissions. You can also get sponsored posts by requiring payment for post submissions.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.
And don’t forget, if you like this article, then please follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Really very good article with information. I need to enable guest form on my blog. So I learned a lot of things from here.
http//techonly.org
Thank you.
Hi Zahidul,
I’m glad you found our article helpful! 🙂
I have a question, can we set a level of approval before automatically guest posting? Because otherwise we would be subject to a lot of guest posting spam and I don’t want that. Please advise and have a great day ahead!
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Hi Gerald — Sure, you can definitely require approval first. To do that, you’d just need to use these steps:
1) Open up the form builder, then go to Settings > Post Submissions.
2) Under “Post Status”, select “Pending Review”.
That way, these posts will not publish until you’ve had a chance to look it over (at which point you can decide what you’d like to do, as it will look and work like any other WordPress post).
I hope this helps! And you might also consider checking out our Post Submissions addon setup doc for a bunch of details like this 🙂