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Come riscrivere il nome dell’autore ospite con i campi personalizzati in WordPress

La pubblicazione di articoli da parte di ospiti è un ottimo modo per mantenere fresco il vostro sito WordPress. È anche un buon modo per attirare nuovi lettori. Questo è uno dei motivi principali per cui pubblichiamo sul nostro blog i post degli esperti di WordPress.

Ma non è il caso di creare un nuovo account utente per ogni autore ospite che contribuisce al sito.

Per fortuna c’è un modo più semplice!

È possibile riscrivere i nomi degli autori ospiti utilizzando i campi personalizzati di WordPress. Questo significa che non ci saranno più account utente aggiuntivi a ingombrare la vostra Bacheca.

In questo articolo vi illustreremo come impostare facilmente i campi personalizzati per i nomi degli autori ospiti.

How to rewrite guest author name in WordPress

Come riscrivere il nome dell’autore ospite con i campi personalizzati in WordPress

A volte, il nome che un autore ospite usa per i suoi social media o per la sua biografia non è lo stesso che usa per il suo account utente su WordPress. Potrebbe trattarsi di un nickname, di uno pseudonimo o semplicemente di una variante diversa del nome.

Utilizzando i campi personalizzati, è possibile visualizzare il nome preferito dell’autore ospite sulle pubblicazioni del blog, garantendo la coerenza con la sua presenza online.

Inoltre, l’uso di campi personalizzati aiuta a tenere in ordine l’elenco degli utenti del sito. Non avrete un mucchio di account utente WordPress inattivi di autori ospiti occasionali. In questo modo è più facile gestire il sito e concentrarsi sui normali collaboratori.

Siete pronti a snellire il processo di pubblicazione degli ospiti e a far funzionare il vostro sito WordPress senza intoppi? Ecco una rapida panoramica dei due metodi che condivideremo in questo articolo:

Cominciamo!

Metodo 1: Aggiungere informazioni sull’autore ospite con un plugin di WordPress

Per questo metodo, utilizzeremo un plugin per WordPress. L’uso di un plugin rende il processo molto più semplice e consigliamo questo approccio a tutti gli utenti: principianti o più esperti.

Per iniziare, installiamo e attiviamo il plugin Autore ospite. Se avete bisogno di aiuto, potete consultare la nostra guida passo-passo su come installare un plugin di WordPress.

Dopo l’attivazione, è necessario modificare la pubblicazione del blog in cui si desidera dare credito a un autore ospite. Nell’editor a blocchi, si noterà una nuova scheda con l’etichetta “Autore” sotto il pannello della pubblicazione a destra.

Da qui si può passare alla scheda “Ospite” e inserire le informazioni sull’autore ospite, come il nome, il sito web, una breve descrizione biografica e una fotografia.

Add guest author information

Dopo aver completato le informazioni necessarie, è possibile salvare o pubblicare la pubblicazione e vederne l’anteprima nel browser.

Ecco come appariva sul nostro sito web demo:

Guest author added to a blog post

Metodo 2: Aggiungere un autore ospite in WordPress con campi personalizzati

Questo metodo richiede l’aggiunta di codice ai file del tema di WordPress. Se non l’avete mai fatto prima, vi consigliamo di dare un’occhiata alla nostra guida su come add-on di snippet di codice personalizzati in WordPress.

Utilizzeremo una caratteristica di WordPress chiamata campi personalizzati. I campi personalizzati consentono di aggiungere metadati personalizzati ai contenuti, che possono essere visualizzati nel tema di WordPress aggiungendo un po’ di codice.

Per approfondire il tema dei campi personalizzati, potete consultare il nostro articolo sui campi personalizzati di WordPress per i principianti.

In questa esercitazione, per prima cosa salveremo il nome dell’autore ospite come campo personalizzato in WordPress. Successivamente, utilizzeremo uno snippet di codice per sostituire il nome dell’autore con il nome dell’autore ospite disponibile come metadato personalizzato.

Per prima cosa, è necessario modificare la pubblicazione del blog in cui si vuole visualizzare il nome dell’autore ospite.

Nell’editor a blocchi, si può iniziare facendo clic sul menu a tre punti in alto a destra della schermata e selezionare “Preferenze”.

Preferences

Si aprirà la finestra a comparsa per le impostazioni dell’editor a blocchi.

Da qui, è necessario scorrere verso il basso la scheda “Generale” e attivare l’opzione “Campi personalizzati” nella sezione “Avanzate”.

Quindi, è sufficiente cliccare sul pulsante “Mostra e ricarica la pagina” per attivare i campi personalizzati.

Show and Reload Page button to enable custom fields

Nota: questo passaggio può variare leggermente a seconda del tema attivato. In generale, se si abilita l’opzione “Campi personalizzati”, indipendentemente da dove si trova l’attiva/disattiva, si è a posto.

Una volta fatto, si può chiudere il popup “Preferenze”.

Si noterà quindi un nuovo boxed “Campi personalizzati” sotto l’editor.

Add new custom field

A questo punto, è necessario fare clic sul link “Inserisci nuovo” per creare un campo personalizzato per il nome dell’autore ospite.

Innanzitutto, inseriamo “guest-author” come nome del campo personalizzato. Poi, nel campo ‘Valore’, inseriamo semplicemente il nome dell’autore ospite.

Fare clic sul pulsante “Aggiungi campo personalizzato” per salvarlo.

Guest author custom field

Dopodiché, non dimenticate di aggiornare o salvare l’articolo del blog.

Ora che abbiamo salvato le informazioni sull’autore ospite come campo personalizzato, il passo successivo è quello di visualizzarle sul sito web.

In genere, i tutorial indicano di copiare e incollare uno specifico frammento di codice PHP nel file functions.php del tema o in un plugin specifico del sito. Tuttavia, non lo consigliamo, perché è rischioso e potrebbe danneggiare il sito.

Il modo più semplice per farlo è utilizzare WPCode, un plugin progettato per rendere semplice e sicura l’aggiunta di codice personalizzato al vostro sito web WordPress, anche per i principianti.

Quindi, per prima cosa installiamolo. Si può usare la versione gratuita di WPCode come inizio, poiché ha tutto ciò che serve per aggiungere lo snippet.

Se avete bisogno di aiuto, consultate gratuitamente la nostra guida su come installare un plugin di WordPress.

Una volta installato, si può navigare in Code Snippet + Add Snippet Add Custom Snippet.

Add Custom Snippet button in WPCode

Quindi, si dovrà assegnare un nome allo snippet personalizzato, in modo da poterlo riconoscere facilmente nell’elenco degli snippet aggiunti.

Ora, assicuriamoci di attivare/disattivare il pulsante “Inactive” e di scegliere “PHP snippet” dal menu a discesa.

A questo punto, è possibile copiare il codice seguente e incollarlo nel campo “Anteprima codice”:

add_filter( 'the_author', 'guest_author_name' );
add_filter( 'get_the_author_display_name', 'guest_author_name' );
 
function guest_author_name( $name ) {
global $post;
 
$author = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'guest-author', true );
 
if ( $author )
$name = $author;
 
return $name;
}

Questo codice verifica semplicemente se il campo personalizzato guest-author è stato aggiunto e quindi sostituisce il nome dell’autore con il valore del campo personalizzato guest-author.

Ecco come potrebbe apparire nell’editor di WPCode:

Adding Guest Author's PHP snippet using WPCode

Una volta impostato tutto, non dimenticate di fare clic sul pulsante “Salva frammento” per salvare le modifiche.

Ora, se visitate la pubblicazione degli ospiti che avete modificato in precedenza, potete vedere il codice in azione.

Author name replaced with guest author name

E questo è quanto!

Speriamo che questo articolo vi abbia aiutato a riscrivere facilmente il nome dell’autore e a sostituirlo con il nome dell’autore ospite in WordPress. In seguito, potreste anche consultare la nostra guida su come add-on di autori multipli per le pubblicazioni di WordPress e su come aggiungere o rimuovere capacità ai ruoli degli utenti in WordPress.

Se questo articolo vi è piaciuto, iscrivetevi al nostro canale YouTube per le esercitazioni video su WordPress. Potete trovarci anche su Twitter e Facebook.

Divulgazione: I nostri contenuti sono sostenuti dai lettori. Ciò significa che se cliccate su alcuni dei nostri link, potremmo guadagnare una commissione. Vedi come WPBeginner è finanziato , perché è importante e come puoi sostenerci. Ecco il nostro processo editoriale .

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Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

93 commentiLascia una risposta

  1. D Swarna Prasad

    How to get custom field values in amp version of wp

    • WPBeginner Support

      AMP adds their custom modifications so at this time we do not have a specific recommendation for AMP

      Admin

  2. Marcus

    How to make this work on AMP Pages?

    • WPBeginner Support

      Unless the plugin is overriding the code, this should still work.

      Admin

  3. D Swarna Prasad Bangre

    Dear Sir,
    I want to now similar to rewriting of the author name, can I rewrite author bio or author info. Please

  4. Catherine

    This doesn’t appear to be working for me. I’ve added the code and see the updated author name in admin view, but in preview, the guest-author name doesn’t appear in the byline of the article (my name still appears).

    What’s extra odd — the byline correctly links to the URL of the guest-author. Why isn’t the guest-author name not appearing in the byline?

  5. Akansha

    Hi,
    I have tried the code and it is working for me on the post detailed page but i have a static home page and have a section to display latest posts, and in that section the author name is not affecting .i.e. it is not showing the guest author name instead showing the real author name.

    Do i need to so anything else to get it work on home page also?

    One more issue—>

    On post detailed page the author name is changing to guest author name but on the same page i have a post displaying in the sidebar so on changing the guest author name of a post, the author name of sidebar post is also getting changed ?

    Why is it happening ??

  6. Petra

    This is great thanks! There is one part we can’t get to work though: On top of the post the author is mentioned that we fill in at the Custom Field. All good. This is a link that will normally bring you to a page with all the posts of that author. We have created a Wordpress account for all these posts called Guest Authors. So that is what we select in the Author Field for these posts. This means all posts with guest-authors in the custom field, will be collected on that Guest Authors page, which is the case. The problem is now that it titles that page to whichever ‘custom field author’ we used last, instead of the ‘Guest Authors’. Can we solve this?

  7. Denis

    Hello,
    thats what I was looking for! Great.
    But why do I need 2 HOOKS?
    Cheers,
    Denis

  8. Amar

    In my website, Author name has no relevance. So by hiding author name, I haven’t compromised with visitor’s engagement. Also, I noindex Author in Yoast plugin setting.

    Is Author Name important for article SEO? I choose to hide author name in my website theme setting. Is this a right decision?

    I want to know – does author name in article matters to Google?

  9. Jiten

    Hello,

    Its fulfill my guest author’s needs. Thank You so much :)

    I want to know is it possible to sort guest author’s post on one page. Suppose If I clicked on guest author’s name and than it display all that posts which are published by that guest author?

    Thanks

  10. Victor S.

    Wanted to write this piece of code myself. Went to check online first.. Found your simple and clean piece of code. As usual, you guys make it so easy! Thank you!

  11. Scotty

    Can you help me link to the posts by the guest author? In other words, I’ve spent hours trying to create a link to a custom field archive page? After successfully implementing the above tutorial, I then added the following to my post. I hoped to link to an archive page of all these author’s guests post. But it defaults to the websites main author page:

    More posts by

    • WPBeginner Support

      If you would like Guest author to have an archive page, then instead of using a custom field you can simply create an account for that author.

      Admin

      • Scotty

        Thanks for your reply. That works. But I was trying to avoid creating dozens of author profiles. I could achieve the same thing tagging the guest authors, but again that junks up the tags.

      • The Berry

        Thanks for this pointer you guys are the best. In my admin I have added guest authors and in my post-loop code, I have a custom block of code where I show that author and the user can click to see links to all the authors previous posts as such:

        <span class="vw-post-author" >
        <a class="author-name" href="” title=” ” rel=”author” >
        More on the author:

        Without implementing the custom field code in your example, the problem is that when I post the story, it doesn’t show the guest author instead it shows as me (the admin) who posted the story.

        The custom fields code from above works but since I can’t get the guest Author to show, can you tell me how or hint to how I can to link to all the authors previous posts using a similar code from your example?

        • WPBeginner Support

          On the post editor screen, click on the Screen Options button at the top right corner of the screen. This will bring down a menu with a bunch of checkboxes. You need to make sure that the box next to Author is checked. Then scroll down and you will see an Author box below the post editor. Using it, you can change the author.

  12. Mike

    I saw a lot of commenters ask the same question I have – is there a way to de-link the post author’s name on the front end? In other words, the code works correctly. It shows the name that you write in the custom field, however, I don’t want that name to be clickable, just want it to be plain text. How can we de-link the author’s name?

  13. Matheus Baumgart

    To add Guest Description here is my full implementation:

    // Change Guest Author Name, Link and Description
    add_filter( 'get_the_author_user_url', 'guest_author_url' ); 
    add_filter( 'the_author', 'guest_author_name' ); 
    
    add_filter( 'get_the_author_description', 'guest_author_description' ); 
    
    function guest_author_url($url) {
      global $post;
      $guest_url = get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-url', true );
      if ( filter_var($guest_url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) ) {
        return $guest_url;
      } elseif ( get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-author', true ) ) {
        return '';
      }
      return $url;
    }
    
    function guest_author_name($name) {
      global $post;
      $guest_url = get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-url', true );
      $guest_name = get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-author', true );
      if ( $guest_name &amp;&amp; filter_var($guest_url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) ) {
        return '<a href="' . esc_url( $guest_url ) . '" rel="nofollow">' . $guest_name . '</a>';
      } elseif( $guest_name ) {
        return '<a href="" rel="nofollow">' . $guest_name . '</a>';
      }
      return $name;
    }
    
    function guest_author_description($description) {
      global $post;
      $guest_description = get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-description', true );
      if ( $guest_description ) return $guest_description;
      elseif ( get_post_meta( $post-&gt;ID, 'guest-author', true ) ) {
        return '';
      }
      return $description;
    }
    
    • Neka

      Hi Matheus,
      Thanks for sharing your code with us. I tied to implement the code you have posted on my site and it displays an error that says that there is an unexpected ‘&’ in there and therefore it cause the site to stop working. I am very new to PHP and I haven’t seen the ‘&’ character used in this manner yet. I was wondering if that’s a character change due to the copy and paste process!

      Can you please let me know how were you able to get this to work?

      Thank’s in advance,
      Neka

    • Neka

      Hi Matheus,
      I tied to implement the code you have posted on my site and it displays an error that says that there is an unexpected ‘&’ in there and therefore it cause the site to stop working. I am very new to PHP and I haven’t seen the ‘&’ character used in this manner yet. I was wondering if that’s a character change due to the copy and paste process! Any ideas?

      Thank’s in advance,
      Neka

      • Ayman

        Just replace all instances of > with >
        and all instances of & with &

        • Ayman

          whoops, whatever I typed changed. I’ll put spaces in between:

          Replace & g t ; with >
          and & a m p ; with &

    • Omdeep

      How to implement this code? It does not work… Original post’s code works though.

  14. Bina

    Great solution, thanks! However, when I click on the “new” author link, it shows me a page with all the articles written by the person who’s actually logged in… (which is the admin and not the guest author). Is there a solution for that too?

  15. Roy

    Thanks for the snippet. It works like a charm!

  16. Lana

    Hey! this is great, thanks for the code here – I think I did something wrong?? or maybe you can help me – I put the code in – added the custom field.. did one entry – … all great..

    but now.. when I go to my author page for admin – it has the guest author name for that one article at the top ??!

    so let’s say my default posting name is “The Administrator”.. but for one of those posts, I used the above magic to change the name to “Some Guest” – .. well.. if I click on another post where it says “by: the administrator” – it takes me to a page . but at the top of that page.. even though I came from another post it says “About Some Guest” ..

    any ideas?
    :-)

  17. Manuela

    I’m doing something wrong here…
    Using WP 4.4.
    If I paste the code in functions.php from the directory wp-includes… and I’ll open All Posts in WP I only see a blanc page, there is nothing there anymore. If I delete the code and upload functions.php in the right directory… it all comes back. So what am I doing wrong?

    Is there a specific place in the functions.php or is it because everything is different now with WP since the last update…

    Thnx

    • Lana

      that happened to me first off too – double check your code and make sure there are no rogue curly ‘ s or that you’re not missing a , or a ;

      I’d accidentally added a s when I clicked s to save it

  18. Colin Worf

    Hello, unfortunately my wordpress theme uses timber for theming. and they pointed me towards this codex to modify the code . would it be possible for you to help me make sense of this, I am a novice at coding, but I feel all we would need to do is change things around ever so slightly to work with timber, im just not confident enough to do so myself.

      • Colin Worf

        sorry I was not super clear haha. I’m just trying to use this on my website (missoulacurrent.com) but it is not working, I found it is because my theme doesnt use the “the_author” and
        “get_the_author_display_name” hooks. I tried to switch things around by looking at the timber documentation (see link above), but still cant get it to work, was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction on which hooks to use?

  19. Darren

    This works great but Im trying now to display a list of posts with the current posts’ author, any ideas?

  20. John

    This works great! Question… is there a way to help speed up the guest author post to be posted onto the blog?

    Thanks ~ john

  21. Cory W.

    Works beautifully with WP 3.9, thank you!!

  22. PromotingWebPages.com

    This is simply Brilliant. It works 100% on my client site.

  23. Mayur

    HI

    How can add custom field for Author Bio [ the_author_meta(‘description’)] …Plz Help me

  24. Aaron Silver

    This is exactly what I was looking for: an example of using a filter on the_author. Thanks!

  25. Hardeep Asrani

    It’s exactly what I need, but the guest author’s name is linking it to my profile? Any want to disable this?

    • Editorial Staff

      Unfortunately there is no way to do that. Posts will be associated with your profile. The best thing to do is create a new profile called Guest Blogger.

      Admin

      • Lula

        i have created a new profile for guest bloggers, now how do i link these guest posts to this profile? thanks!

        • Editorial Staff

          Change the author in your WordPress post to Guest author profile.

      • Paul Johnson

        Works perfect. Thanks.

    • N Atta Kusi Adusei

      Try:

      if( !is_admin() ) {
      add_filter( ‘author_link’, ‘my_author_url’ );
      }
      function my_author_url( $url ) {

      global $post;

      if( get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘guest-author’, true) ) {
      if( get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘guest_author_url’, true) ) {
      return esc_url( get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘guest_author_url’, true) );
      } else {
      return ‘#’;
      }
      }

      return $url;
      }
      // Just add a custom field with key ‘guest_author_url’ for guest bloggers

    • Editorial Staff

      You are trying to use this on BuddyPress, when this code is meant for WordPress. We are not very familiar with the default codes of BP, so would not be able to help with that. But the code in the functions.php file only works for the following hooks:

      the_author
      get_the_author_display_name

      From the looks of your code, it seems that you are using: bp_core_get_userlink

      That could be where the problem lies.

      Admin

  26. Katelyn

    I am having trouble getting this to work. I have added the above code in my functions.php file and added the custom field guest-author, but after I publish a post the author does not change. It still displays as me.

    I’m sure I am doing something wrong, but can’t seem to figure out what it is. Does anyone have any ideas?

    Thanks

  27. Mirco

    Fantastic idea, works well in Wordpress 3.5

    • shadyrasmy

      Query by custom filed

  28. Sam

    I saw you answer to someone else further up that to solve this issue of having the guest’s archive show the original author’s posts rather than the guests posts (say they have two or three) that we could just not have their byline link to the archive page. But you didn’t explain how to do that. I’m not really well versed in PHP, but I toyed around with this code for a while trying to make it not link to the author’s archive and i couldn’t get it. What do I delete/add to have it just show the author name with no link?
    Thanks!

  29. larsbachmann

    Great article. I’m using the author fields to show my avatar, name and author description. Is there an easy way to customize this code to also rewrite gravatar and author description? Thx.

  30. AndreaAlden

    Would be so nice if I knew WHERE on the functions.php page to paste this code…Do I need to add <?php> tags around it to make it work? Tried <?php> tags and pasting under “/** * Prints HTML with meta information for the current post-date/time and author. * * @since Twenty Ten 1.0 */” in functions.php file. Neither produced results when I refreshed the edit page in wordpress…Where is the guest author supposed to show up on the page?

  31. jeffshinn

    I tested this in Wordpress 3.2.1 with a custom template built off twentyten and it works flawlessly!

    Thanks for your contribution!

  32. Athif

    @wpbeginner :

    Hi,

    Is it compatible with wp Version 3.2.1? I added the code to my thesis 1.8.2 but it does not work. I cannot see the field in new posts draft though custom fields is selected in screen options

  33. Athif

    Hi,

    Is it compatible with wp Version 3.2.1? I added the code to my thesis 1.8.2 but it does not work. I cannot see the new field in new posts draft though custom fields is selected in screen options

  34. wpbeginner

    @MilindGupta In your post write panel … on the top right panel look at Screens Option … then check custom fields there.

  35. MilindGupta

    I tried placing up the ! did it well no errors nothing but where is the custom field menu!??

    where i’ll put the name and stuff?

    please reply its kinda urgent!

  36. Gwynne

    How do you get the guest-author Custom Field to appear in RSS? It shows me as the author now since I created and published the post. The website shows the correct author, thanks to guest-author, but RSS still shows me. Is there a way to change that?

    • Editorial Staff

      Yes, please look at our post about manipulating RSS. You can use one of the techniques mentioned in that article for this.

      Admin

  37. Anne

    I’m overlooking something very obvious I guess.

    The custom field has to be named guest-author

    How whould the guest-author user be named? is that guest_author_name or something else? (I guess something else because that is not working for me)
    (I’m creating a new website, for the moment you can find it on http://new.tenderfeelings.net)

    • Editorial Staff

      If you look at the image in the article: It shows that the custom-field’s name is guest-author and value: is Syed Balkhi. In the value area, you will add the guest-author’s name.

      Admin

  38. NicOnlyOne

    ouch….i’ve jsut found the solucion
    Note: In WordPress 3.1 – the core team wanted to make the Write Panel cleaner, so they unchecked the view button for Custom Fields. If you don’t see them, then click on the Screen Options Tab (in the top right hand corner), and check Custom Fields.

    thank you

  39. NicOnlyOne

    It looks like th 3.1 version does not allow this function anymore!

  40. Christian Sisson

    Great function!! Thanks for sharing :)

    Maybe you guys can help me on one thing. I have 2 “official” authors on a blog and now I’m adding a guest author (not a new user, just a name on a custom field). The problem is that the guest author link is returning the official author’s URL and consequently his posts. I need it to return all the guest author posts. How can I accomplish that??? (hope I made myself clear enough!).

    Thanks!!!!!!

    • Editorial Staff

      The best way to create author archives when you are in that condition … is create a new account called Guest Authors, and then just post everything under there.

      Admin

      • SRoberts

        Unfortunately, with the filter above applied, the title for that will have the custom guest author’s name appear, but all posts from all guest authors will appear in the archive list. In other words, the title on the archive page will say “displaying all posts by (name of guest author)” rather than “displaying all posts by guest authors”

        • Rob

          @SRoberts, that actually doesn’t seem to be the case. I just implemented this fine function as well and I also have a Guest account created. On a post by Guest, I also added the guest-author custom field with a value of Rumplestiltskin.

          The author for this post is now listed as “Rumplestiltskin”, but the author link points (for me) to /author/guest.

          Clicking that takes me to the author archives, which is titled “Guest” at the top of the page, not “Rumplestiltskin”. Seems to work well together.

      • Crpk

        Is there a way to just overwrite the link to author’s posts with a link from another custom field and do the same with avatar (email)?

  41. Klaus

    Great snippet, but with one fault though (which I hope you have a fix for). The snippet *does* replace my Guest Author user account with whatever name I define as a custom field, but when I click on that author name inside the post, I end up at an URL such as “/author/guestauthor”, but the name displayed at the top of that page is not “Guest Author”, as is the name of that user account, but instead the name I defined as a custom field for one of the posts.

    I thought it would be solved by simple wrapping (is_single) around the snippet, so that it would only execute when viewing a post, but that doesn’t work at all.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks :)

    • Editorial Staff

      The whole idea behind this method is that you do not want to create a new profile for the user. Because a lot of guest posters are one-time posters. So you can just credit them with their name, and author signature at the bottom of the post. If they are regular posters, then this method is not for you.

      Admin

      • Christopher Wulff

        I think the concern is that if you’re using get_the_author in your template to link the author names to the author post archive, this links to whatever author is registered as the author of the post.

        This technique, as posted, makes sense when you’re running a single author blog and want to have guest authors, but when it’s a multi-author site to begin with this doesn’t work out quite as well.

        Any thoughts on how that could be corrected so that it doesn’t change the author’s name on the archive page?

        • Editorial Staff

          You can simply not link to the author archive page if it is Guest Post….

  42. Riki

    Is it possible to include a field for the author’s description as well? I already have a plugin (wp-gravatar) that posts the author’s description at the end of a post. However, I want to be able to post the guest author’s description without having to create new accounts everytime. Is it possible to combine the method you described above to make it do this?

    • Editorial Staff

      Yes, it is possible to do the guest author description via custom field. You can set a conditional statement if there is x custom field, then display the custom field text, if not then display wp-gravatar.

      Admin

      • Nate

        i’m going to jump in on this, since the custom field author hack has helped considerably …

        i’d like to populate the ‘about the author’ page as well, using the same method (custom field). i’m also not a coder; would i use a similar code as to the one used above?

        thanks!

        • Editorial Staff

          If you mean specific author profile pages, then no this cannot be used for that. If you mean a little box below the guest posts as a custom field, then sure a similar function could be used :)

        • Nate

          i remain lost on how to do this (basically, do exactly what riki asked. i’ve fiddled with the code about a dozen or so times with no result. eeeeh.

    • Editorial Staff

      What is not working? We have this running on WPBeginner site and it works just fine. We are just calling a simple custom field.

      Admin

      • rikkit

        I tried this too, pasting the code into the top of my includes/functions.php file. I got a php error, saying that something was an invalid filter. Does this work with Wordpress 3.0?

        I hope I can get it to work, I’m porting a site to Wordpress form Joomla and this is the only thing I’m missing.

  43. Scott

    Thanks so much for this post – this was exactly what I’ve been looking for. Brought up my issue here and used a modified version of your code to fix it. Thanks again!

  44. John Hewitt

    Thank you so much for this article; I was going nuts trying to get various writers sorted out for my website and now I can add author names so easily. I use custom fields for all my requirements which affected ‘the_author()’ and stopped author names being shown at all. The above has allowed me to have the authors appear and highlight different authors as they write.

    Sorry for rambling! You have saved me a lot of work…thanks!
    I’ll also tweet it for you!

  45. Carl

    I’d like to try this suggestion but it would be helpful for this beginner to know where the “functions.php” file is located and then, exactly where to insert the code. I tried to edit the Theme Functions file (it said “functions.php in parentheses) but got a warning that this file cannot be edited. Is the file I want on the server?

    thanks,
    Carl

  46. Konstantin

    Even though, I’m not a huge fan of custom fields period, I like the idea behind your snippet.
    I was actually thinking about exactly this issue (adding a user for every guest author) just the other day.

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