Authors

The MediaPress Authors plugin, enhances WordPress by managing authorship through taxonomies. This introduces support for guest authors, allowing content to be attributed accurately without requiring each contributor to have a user account. Additionally, the feature improves how authorship is handled when a user is deactivated or removed, preserving accurate bylines and maintaining content integrity. This guide takes you through the steps to create new guest authors and assign them to posts.

Michael Bertram
12 steps
4 minutes

Media

When the MediaPress **authors** plugin is active on your site, it will replace the native WordPress Authors functionality. Rather than having authorship linked to user accounts, MediaPress Authors allows you to set up authors using taxonomies. You can also edit author avatars and bylines within the taxonomy.

Setting up a MediaPress Author

Once the plugin is activated, you will find **authors** in the dashboard sidebar.

Selecting the tab will bring you to the Authors panel. Here you can add a new author, adding a **name**, **slug** and **description**, before selecting **add new author.**

**Please Note**: The description will act as the **author bio.**

On the right hand side of the panel, you will see your newly added **author** along with any other already existing authors.

Here, you can select an **author**, to add additional information.

Here, you will see three additional custom fields, allowing you to add an **avatar** **image**, **prefix** (used as the default prefix text) and a **title** (used as the default byline text). Selecting **Update**, will save any changes.

Assigning an author to a post

There are multiple ways a **MediaPress** **author** can be assigned to a post.

Within your post, select the **meta** tab.

Within the author byline field you should see the list of MediaPress **authors**. Select your desired author.

When returning to the editor, you will see that the selected author also appears in the sidebar. From here the author can be removed and changed to a different **author**.

All changes will reflect in both the editor **sidebar** and in the **meta** tab.

**Please Note**: It could be the case that the author of the post was not the author of the post content. In this case and depending on your specific requirements, it may be more appropriate for the **author** to be placed within a dedicated page template.

Within the post template, the MediaPress **author** can be added

Here you can see, we have **two** very similar templates, one for standard single posts, and one dedicated for those including **authors**, with the retrospective blocks included.

When viewing on the front-end, you will see, that the **author** assigned in the editor, will show on your post.