We’ve released this plugin to allow blog owners to reward regular posters with a backlink. You can see it in action by looking to the right, we’re displaying it under “contributors”.
You can choose in the options what it takes for a writer to appear, by selecting x posts in y days. Maybe you want 1 post in the last week, 3 in the last month, 12 in the last year – its completely up to you.
Everything is automated. When a writer qualifies, their link will appear without any input from you. If they ever no longer qualify, their link will simply vanish until they qualify again.
In the settings you can select any writers that you want to block from the list. You can also choose whether it displays sitewide or homepage only.
To install it, simply copy the php file to your “plugins” folder. Activate it as a plugin, then go to Widgets (under Appearance) and drag it to where it needs to go. You can change any settings under “WP Contributors” in Settings.
The “powered by” credit link is completely optional. It is Off as standard, but if you’d like to help support us then feel free to tick the box to display the link 
You can download the plugin here. I’ll leave comments on for this one, feel free to ask any questions or leave any feedback.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Can’t see any “Contributors” block on the right. Do you need some?
(No, that wasn’t a hint)
Oops, good catch
We’ve removed it for now – playing about with a new design/layout so needed to remove plugins from the sidebar. I will put them back soon…
I may have missed something but is there a way to show the Contributors’ nicknames instead of the usernames? Wouldn’t that be more appropriate for aesthetics and security purposes?
Ben, it will show whatever name the persons posts appear under. I think aesthetically it’ll be better to have the real peoples names listed, rather than let them choose their own – I doubt many blog owners want a list of anchor text stuffed links under their contributors. Security wise I don’t see any issue – anyone can see the names by looking at posts anyway.
If anyone wants to have options of names listed under a different way I’m open to suggestions for when we release v2.
OK, thanks for the reply. I just thought that it would be better to list the nickname (or first + last name) rather than the username since the username they login with could be something permanent like ‘thedevil666′ but the nickname/first name-last name can be changed anytime they want to a more pleasant one. Perhaps an admin option to choose in v2?