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WordPress Plugin · by Degird

The Secure Guest Posting Plugin for WordPress

Accept guest posts on WordPress without handing over your backend. GuestDock gives every contributor a temporary, sandboxed workspace they cannot escape.

The stock Contributor role still exposes the media library, other authors' drafts, and far more of wp-admin than an outside writer should ever see. GuestDock enforces isolation at the database query level instead, so a guest author's session simply cannot return content, uploads, or settings that belong to anyone else.

Install from WordPress.org
See How It Works

Free forever · GPL licensed · WordPress 5.8+ · PHP 7.4+

Built for Real Publishing

Everything a Guest Post Programme Needs, in One Plugin

GuestDock covers the whole lifecycle of an outside contribution: invite, sandbox, write, review, publish, expire. Each piece removes a manual check an editor would otherwise have to perform by hand on every single submission.

Query-Level Sandbox Isolation
Expiring, Limited Guest Access
Approval & Feedback Workflow
Automatic Nofollow Link Control

Who It's For

Who Uses GuestDock?

If you publish work written by people outside your team, you already know the trade-off: contributors need backend access, and backend access is exactly what you do not want to give them. GuestDock exists to end that trade-off.

Multi-Author Blogs

Bring in outside writers without turning your dashboard into a shared workspace. Every guest sees their own posts and their own uploads, nothing else, and their access ends on the date you set rather than the date someone remembers to revoke it.

Online Magazines & News Sites

Run a real editorial desk: a central queue, inline preview, word-count badges, and written feedback that reaches the author by email instead of a separate chat thread.

Content Agencies

Give freelance writers a workspace on the client's site with post limits and quality rules already enforced, so briefs are met before anything reaches review.

SaaS & Brand Blogs

Accept guest contributions from customers, partners, and community experts while keeping settings, plugins, users, and every other author's draft completely out of reach. Contributors get a writing tool; they never get an admin panel.

SEO Teams

Run a guest post programme with outbound links automatically marked rel="nofollow sponsored" and a link-ratio check built into the editor.

Community & Niche Sites

Open submissions to readers through a frontend form with honeypot and rate limiting, then approve contributors one at a time.

Anyone Still Handing Out Contributor Accounts

The stock Contributor role was designed for colleagues, not strangers. It leaves the media library browsable, other people's drafts listable, and access permanent by default. GuestDock replaces it with a role that expires, counts submissions, blocks privilege escalation at runtime, and filters every query, AJAX call, and REST response down to the guest's own content.

Core Features

A Complete WordPress Editorial Workflow Plugin

GuestDock is not a form that emails you a draft. It is a sandboxed contributor environment, an editorial pipeline, and a set of content-security rules that apply themselves to every guest post.

01 / 09

True Query-Level Isolation

Most guest posting plugins hide things with CSS or by removing menu items, which stops nobody who knows a direct URL. GuestDock hooks into pre_get_posts, the ajax_query_attachments handler, and the REST API filters so the data never leaves the database in the first place. A guest requesting another author's post or browsing the media library gets an empty result, not a hidden one. Isolation you can verify is the whole reason the plugin exists.

Simple Workflow

How GuestDock Works

Four steps from an email address to a published guest post — with access that closes itself afterwards.

01

Invite the Guest

Add a contributor by email with an expiration date and a post limit. GuestDock generates the username from the email prefix and creates the sandboxed role.

02

They Log In, Sandboxed

The guest signs in with standard credentials or an AuthDock magic link, sees an onboarding modal with your guidelines, and lands in a workspace containing only their own content.

03

They Write & Submit

The writer picks a content template or starts blank, follows the Smart Submission Checklist and SEO Pre-Check live in the editor, then submits for review.

04

You Review & Publish

Approve from the central queue, or send feedback that emails the author for a revision. When the expiry date arrives, access ends on its own.

Pricing

Free, With No Premium Upsell

GuestDock is one plugin with every feature included. There is no pro tier holding back the sandbox, the review queue, the analytics, or the API — the version on WordPress.org is the whole product.

Free Forever

$0

GPL licensed

The complete guest posting plugin for WordPress: sandbox, editorial workflow, content protection, analytics, and developer tools.

Query-level sandbox isolation for every guest
Time-limited access and per-guest post limits
Central review queue with approval and feedback
Smart Submission Checklist and SEO Pre-Check
Link limiting with automatic nofollow sponsored
Media hardening, analytics, and CSV export
REST API, webhooks, and frontend submission form
30+ hooks and filters for developers
Install from WordPress.org

GuestDock 1.1.0 requires WordPress 5.8 or later and PHP 7.4 or later, and is tested up to WordPress 7.0.2. It is licensed under the GPL. Multisite is not supported yet; the plugin currently runs on single-site installations, with multisite planned for a future release.

Full Feature Set

More Built-In Tools

Beyond the sandbox and the review queue, GuestDock handles the smaller jobs that make a guest post programme sustainable instead of exhausting.

Per-Guest Analytics

Posts submitted, approval rates, and average word count for every contributor.

One-Click CSV Export

Export contributor metrics for reporting or offline analysis.

Content Templates

Reusable admin-created templates such as Product Review or How-To Guide, plus a Start Blank option.

Template Selector Modal

Guests choose a template the moment they open a new post.

Guest Onboarding Modal

First-login guidelines so contributors know your rules before writing a word.

Public Contributor Profiles

Author pages with bio, website, and X/Twitter and LinkedIn links.

Admin Setup Wizard

A four-step onboarding wizard configures the plugin on first activation.

Inline Guest Management

Edit expiration dates and post limits directly from the guest list.

Safe Guest Removal

Removing a guest reassigns their posts to an administrator instead of orphaning content.

Pending Count Badge

A live badge on the admin menu shows how many submissions are waiting.

Customisable Emails

All six automated email types are editable with placeholder tags.

Webhooks

guest.invited, post.submitted, and post.approved events for Zapier, Make, Slack, or your own endpoint.

REST API

A guestdock/v1 namespace for programmatic access, gated behind manage_options.

Frontend Request Form

The [guestdock_request_form] shortcode collects applications with honeypot and rate limiting.

Dashboard Widget

A GuestDock at a Glance widget with overview cards for published posts and active guests.

Category Locking

Restrict guest submissions to the sections you have pre-approved.

Security First

A Sandbox Enforced by the Database Query, Not the CSS

Hiding a menu item is not access control. GuestDock filters what a guest contributor can retrieve at the source — pre_get_posts for content queries, the AJAX attachment query for the media library, and the REST API filters for everything the block editor asks for. Capabilities are re-checked at runtime, so a guest cannot escalate their way into anything the role was never granted.

What a sandboxed guest can and cannot reach:

Their own posts and drafts — visible, editable, and submittable — nothing from any other author
Their own uploads only — the media library query returns their files; everyone else's simply are not there
No settings, users, or plugins — blocked by capability checks enforced at runtime, not hidden by the interface

Uploads are additionally limited to JPG, PNG, GIF, and WebP with strict MIME validation, double-extension checks, race-condition protection, size limits, and per-user quotas. XML-RPC is disabled and the REST API is hardened.

Why We Built It

Guest Posting Should Not Mean
Handing Over the Keys

Every publisher who accepts outside contributions runs into the same wall. To write in WordPress, someone needs an account. The account WordPress offers for this job is Contributor, and Contributor was designed for a colleague down the hall, not a writer you met over email last week.

So editors improvise. They create accounts and forget to delete them. They ask writers to send Google Docs and paste the formatting back in by hand. They install a form plugin that emails a draft and loses the images. None of it is secure, and none of it scales past a handful of posts a month.

GuestDock takes the other approach: keep the contributor inside WordPress, where the editor and the media library and the preview all work properly, and make the boundary real. Isolation at the query level, access that expires, submission limits that count themselves, and an editorial queue where approval and feedback actually live. Free, GPL, and complete — because guest posting security should not be a paid upgrade.

Isolation That Holds

Filtered at pre_get_posts, AJAX, and REST — not hidden with CSS.

Access That Expires

Guest accounts close on their own date instead of living forever.

A Real Editorial Desk

One queue, inline preview, feedback that reaches the author.

Quality Enforced Upfront

Word counts, featured images, excerpts, and SEO checked while writing.

SEO You Control

Link caps and automatic rel="nofollow sponsored" on outbound links.

Free and GPL

Every feature ships in the WordPress.org release with no premium tier.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Started

Ready to Accept Guest Posts Without Giving Away Access?

Install GuestDock from WordPress.org, run the four-step setup wizard, and invite your first contributor with an expiry date and a post limit. The whole plugin is free.

Install from WordPress.org
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Free forever · GPL licensed · No premium tier · Single-site WordPress