Allow Visitors to Submit Posts to Your WordPress Website

In most of the sites the users are only the passive readers. However the contribution of visitors can be a crucial tool for flourishing any website. Many top notch and extremely popular websites encourage their users to submit any kind of contents. From a normal comment to personal photos and contents from users can be the valuable assets of any website. If you are making your mind to allow your web visitors to submit contents to your website then this article can be helpful for you. In this article we will discuss various methods to allow visitors to submit posts to your WordPress website from the front end.

Allow Visitors to Submit Posts to Your WordPress Website

The easiest method for this task is to use a plugin. There are various great plugins to receive the user generated post. In this article we will be using a free plugin called User Submitted Posts. We will also give you other alternative methods and plugins that can do the job for you.

Receiving post from Users using User Submitted Posts Plugin

This is one of the best plugins available in the market for receiving pictures and post from frontend of your website. The plugin is simple, effective and completely free. In more than 20000 active installs the plugin has 4.7 or higher rating which is really impressive.

To install this plugin, download the plugin from the given link and upload it to /wp-content/plugins of your WordPress installation folder. You can also install the plugin from WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New. You can then activate the plugin by going to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Now visit the plugins setting page by going to Settings > User Submitted Posts.

Click Plugin Settings title where you can configure various things like the form fields, general settings, categories, user options, image uploads and email settings. We recommend you review all the plugins settings and configure the plugin according to your need. After the completing of configuration, click save button at the very bottom to save the settings.

Display the Frontend Form in your website to receive the user posts

You can display the submission form in your page, post or sidebar. Add the following shortcode in your theme.

[user-submitted-posts]

You can also use the following template tag.

<?php if (function_exists('user_submitted_posts')) user_submitted_posts(); ?>

Here is what the form looks like in the front end of your website.

When visitors from your website fill the form and send the posts, then the posts are saved as draft in your website. You can review each submitted posts and publish them yourself.

Some other alternative plugins that could be handy for receiving users generated content are as follows:

1. WPForms

WPForms is indeed a very useful plugin for receiving posts from users. It is beginners friendly and the interface is really clean and intuitive. You can create a contact form in less than 8 clicks. Simplicity is the strong feature of the plugin and complexity of form building is hidden. We actually have a full article about installing WPForms and using it. For full detail about the plugin please read our article “Create a Simple Contact Form with WPForms Plugin in WordPress”.

Also Read: Add Social Sharing Button in WordPress with Flare Plugin

2. Frontend Uploader

This plugin allows you to receive uploads from the non-registered users. It simply inserts the highly customizable submission forms into the posts and pages. General visitors can submit their contents and media which will be held under moderation for website owners to approve it.

3. Frontend Publishing

If you want only your registered users to be able post/articles then this plugin can be pretty useful. Your member can post from frontend without getting access to the sensitive WordPress Admin area. There are some wonderful features included in this plugin. You can create submission guidelines and reject the posts that do not meet the criteria. You can also allow members with certain user level to publish posts instantly. Other posts are added to the ‘pending’ queue.

Conclusion

If you want all of your visitors including non-registered user to be able to submit post then User Submitted Post plugin should be your choice. However if you want only your registered users to post then Frontend Publishing plugin can be a good option to consider. In this article we discussed methods to allow visitors to submit posts to your WordPress website. We hope the article was useful. You can also read our other article on “How to Remove Spam from WordPress Comments“.

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Kantiman Bajracharya

Kantiman Bajracharya is a freelance web developer. He is a computer geek who has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. He has earned lots of satisfied customers while working for numerous successful projects. He is also a WordPress theme creator and web article writer. On free time he likes reading philosophy books, traveling and playing chess.