What is an Author in WordPress?

An author is a role in WordPress whereby someone can create and publish content, upload files, as well as delete content they’ve written.

Rather than risking upsetting or firing an author, which could result in them deleting all the content they’ve produced, instead consider using the contributor role for content creators and writers.

What’s the Difference Between an Author and an Editor?

While an author can create, publish and delete content they’ve published, they can’t do the same things to content created by other authors. Editors are able to manipulate content created by all authors.

What’s the Difference Between an Author and a Contributor?

A contributor is able to write and edit their own content, but they can’t publish it, and definitely can’t modify or delete content of other contributors. An author cannot publish contributor content – for that, an editor is required.

How to Change the Author of a Post Using WordPress Classic Editor?

In the WordPress admin screen, click on Posts, then click the post you want to change so that it opens in the editor.

By default, the author isn’t visible in the classic editor. So, click on Screen Options at the top, then tick the box next to Author.

Scroll down to the bottom of the post and you’ll see an author dropdown where you can select which author is associated with the post. Simply change the value in the dropdown and click the Update button on the right.

How to Change the Author of a Post Using Any Editor in WordPress via Quick Edit?

In the WordPress admin screen, click on Posts, then find the post you want to change and click Quick Edit right below the post title.

Once in Quick Edit mode, you’ll find the author dropdown where you can select from all available authors. Once chosen, click Update so that the changes take effect. Job done!

How to Hide Author Name in WordPress Posts Without a Plugin?

Thanks the power of Customizer, you can simply login to the WordPress admin panel, select Appearance → Customize

Then scroll down to Additional CSS.

At this point, you’ll want to decide whether you want to hide just the author name, or if you’d also like to hide the category links, category links and/or post date as well.

To hide just the author, insert this code in the box: .entry-meta .byline { display: none; }

Note: Not every theme uses the default markup, so you may have to view your blog in a browser, then inspect element on a post page to see what CSS you need to set “display: none;”.

How to Allow Guest Author Posts in WordPress With a Plugin?

If you’re planning on having numerous posts by guest authors (guest posts) and would like to avoid creating unique user accounts on the site (which includes registration steps, confirmation/validation and the cluttering of the users admin area of wp-admin, then consider using a plugin which allows guest posts, without all those issues.

Check out the Guest Author plugin to get started. This plugin emulates regular authors, in that it will allow upload of avatars, linking to custom pages, an author description, and still have basic author functionality.

Install the Guest Author plugin using our How to Install Plugins procedure:

WordPress Guest Author Plugin

Note: This plugin will not work with every theme and could possibly impact your regular author functionality. So, consider whether you really need this before implementing – then test thoroughly, if you do decide to install!!

How to Submit Guest Author Posts in WordPress using Guest Author Plugin?

This assumes you have already installed the Guest Author plugin which emulates regular authors, but which doesn’t require adding user accounts for each.

With the plugin installed and activated, you can choose whether to allow guest authors on pages, posts or both via:

  Settings -> Guest Author

To add new posts by Guest Authors, simple follow the process of adding new posts:

  Posts -> Add New

Then go beyond the bottom of the post form to the Author section. Normally, you’d use the user tab to select from registered users in the dropdown. But, for guest authors, use the Guest tab.

In that tab you enter the author name, URL, description and upload or choose an image from the media library, if you’d like.

Then publish like any other post and your guest author details should appear just like regular authors, next to posts.

Note: This doesn’t automatically work with every theme. In fact, you may have to fiddle with it a bit to get it to work. This ‘fiddling’ is usually done within custom theme options or custom fields the theme is using to manage the various author variables. See the excellent details on KnownHost for more.