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.
Tip: 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
1. Once the plugin is activated, you will find authors in the dashboard sidebar.
2. 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.
Tip: Please Note: The description will act as the author bio.
3. On the right hand side of the panel, you will see your newly added author along with any other already existing authors.
4. Here, you can select an author, to add additional information.
5. 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
Tip: There are multiple ways a MediaPress author can be assigned to a post.
6. Within your post, select the meta tab.
7. Within the author byline field you should see the list of MediaPress authors. Select your desired author.
8. 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.
9. All changes will reflect in both the editor sidebar and in the meta tab.
Alert: 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.
10. Within the post template, the MediaPress author can be added
11. 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.
12. When viewing on the front-end, you will see, that the author assigned in the editor, will show on your post.
