How To Change The Author In WordPress
Do you want to change the author name on your WordPress Posts?
When you publish a post on your WordPress site, the author’s display name will show up at the end of their post by default. Since you are reading this post, it’s safe to assume you want to change this display name for one or more of your posts.
Although it does not happen often, changing authors of your WordPress posts may be necessary at times. Fortunately, WordPress provides an easy way to make this change.
In this guide, we will explain some of the scenarios where changing the author is necessary. Then we will proceed to show you how to change the author in WordPress for a single post as well as multiple posts.
Content:
- Reasons for Changing the Author’s Name of a WordPress Post
- How to Change the Author of WordPress Posts
- Bonus Tips
- Conclusion
Reasons for Changing Author’s Name of a WordPress Post
There are several reasons why you may need to change the name of an author on your WordPress site. Although it does not happen often, it comes in handy in certain situations.
The first reason may be that the author of the post is no longer with you. This usually happens if you have a team of writers working on your site. If a writer leaves, you may decide to change the author name on their posts.
Another reason is if the post was originally written by a ghostwriter whom you later hired to work for you. If you have previously published their post under another name, you may want to change that now, since the original author works with you.
Changing the author of a post may also become necessary when the author decides to identify with a different name. This could be due to a change in name or any other reason.
How to Change Author in WordPress
In this section, we will show how to change a post author in WordPress for a single post as well as multiple posts.
Note that you can only change the author of a post to an existing user on your WordPress site. If you need to assign the post to a new author, you need to create the user from the ‘Users’ section, then assign existing posts to that user.
You can go to the add user section of this guide if you need to create a new user.
How To Change The Author Of A Single Post in WordPress
You may want to change the author of a single post on your site from the post editor. We will show you how to achieve this using quick edit, the block editor, and the classic editor.
How To Change Posts Author Using Quick Edit
If you need to quickly change the author of a single post or page on your WordPress website, you can use the Quick Edit feature from the post list page.
To start, log in to your WordPress dashboard and then go to Posts >> All Posts. After that, hover your mouse over the article you would want to change the author and then click on Quick Edit under the article title.
A mini editor will popup which includes the ‘Author’ dropdown menu. Choose the new author from this dropdown and then click on the Update button to save your changes.
Block Editor
First, locate the post by clicking on Posts >> All Posts. After that, hover your cursor over the post you wish to change the Author name and then select Edit.
Now, click on the Post tab on the right side of the screen. After that, locate and click on the Author dropdown under the “Status and Visibility” section.
A dropdown menu would appear with a list of available authors. Select the new author from the list and then click on Update to save your changes.
Classic Editor
If you are using the classic editor, you can follow the steps below to change the author on a single post.
Firstly, go to Post >> All Posts to display all the posts on your website. Next, hover over the post on which you want to change the author name and then select Edit.
Now, click on the Screen Options dropdown menu above the editor. Next, locate the Author option and click on the checkbox next to it. This would reveal the Author panel.
After that, scroll down to the “Author” section and click on the box showing the current author’s name. A dropdown with a list of available authors you can choose will pop up.
Select the new author and click on Update to save your changes.
And that is all about changing the author of a single post using either the block editor or the classic editor.
How To Change The Author Of Multiple Posts in WordPress
What if you would like to change the author of multiple posts? Instead of making the changes individually, you can follow the steps below to make bulk changes at once.
To start, log in to your WordPress admin panel and then go to Posts >> All Posts. If you want to change the author for all posts, simply check the box with ‘title’ written next to it to select all posts on the current page. Otherwise, you can select the posts you want to edit using the checkbox next to each post.
Now, click on the Bulk Actions dropdown menu and select Edit. Finally, hit the Apply button to continue.
In the bulk edit menu, click on the ‘Author’ dropdown and select the new author you intend to use.
Finally, click on Update to save your changes.
Side note: By default, WordPress lists only 20 posts per page. So if you have more posts, you may need to increase the number of posts displayed per page.
For this, click on the Screen Options dropdown menu. Under ‘Pagination’, enter the number of post items you wish to display per page in the box and then click on Apply as seen below.
Bonus Tips – Change Author in WordPress
How To Add A New Author
Adding a new author to your WordPress site is necessary if the user you want to assign existing posts to is not registered as an author on your website.
To add a new author, login to your WordPress Admin dashboard and then go to Users >> Add New.
On the “Add User” page, enter the username and email of the author you wish to create. Then create a password for the user.
Next, click on the “Role” dropdown and select Author from the list of user roles. Finally, click on the Add New User button to complete this step.
For more on this, please check our guide on how to enable user registration in WordPress.
How To Hide or Remove An Author From Posts
You may also want to remove or hide the author from showing in a published post. There are two ways you can achieve this – using plugins or manually editing your theme files. We will use the plugin method in this guide.
There are a number of plugins you can use for this, but we will use the WP Meta and Date Remover plugin. You need to install and activate the plugin on your website before you continue.
After installing the plugin, go to Settings >> WP Meta and Date Remover to open the plugins’ settings page.
Here, you can choose whether to hide author information from the frontend of your website. After making your selection, click on the Save Changes button to register your changes.
Conclusion
The WordPress author section lets you add and display information about the author of a particular post. If you need to change this information or the author, we have shown you 3 ways to achieve this on your WordPress website.
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