Overview #
Co-Authors Plus is a plugin maintained by WordPress.com VIP which makes it easy to assign one or more bylines to a post. With the guest authors feature, you can assign a byline to content without having to create a corresponding WordPress account. And, if your theme is using the appropriate template tags, you can create guest bylines without any additional configuration.
Creating or Editing Guest Authors
On WordPress.com VIP, guest authors can be created and managed under “Tools” -> “Guest Authors”.
Each guest author can have many of same fields a normal WordPress user would typically have, including display name, email address, and website. You can assign a featured image in order to override the avatar typically associated with the email address.
Once you’ve created your guest author, his or her byline can be assigned to a post using the normal Co-Authors Plus interface.
Details for Developers
Incorporating new profile fields #
The guest authors feature of Co-Authors Plus was written with extensibility in mind. The default set of profile fields can easily be manipulated using accessible filters. If you want to place your field in one of the existing post meta boxes, it can be as simple as the following example:
Then, for use on the frontend, the new field is automatically loaded onto the $coauthor object.
wp-cli subcommands #
If you’re performing a migration of users to co-author guest authors, there are a couple of helpful wp-cli commands packaged with the plugin:
wp co-authors-plus create_guest_authorswill create guest authors for all of your existing userswp co-authors-plus assign_user_to_coauthorwill then assign all of the posts associated with old user to your new guest author
