PublishPress Authors Has a New Author Pages Feature
PublishPress Authors 3.19 is available today. This release has a powerful new Author Pages feature, so you can showcase the work of each individual author.
In this guide, I'll explain why we built this feature, and then I'll explore how you can use it.
Why we built the Author Pages feature
The WordPress core provides author pages that display the posts written by each author. These author pages will normally be located at a URL like this /author/username/.
Out-of-the-box, PublishPress Authors does support these author pages. However, sometimes there are complications, often involving third party themes. This is because PublishPress Authors does not use the normal WordPress approach to storing author information.
The most common issue is that the wrong name appears on the author pages. You can fix this by modifying your theme. However, if you don't want to modify your theme, you can use the new “Author Pages” feature. This option is much easier to use and involves no code.
How to use the Author Pages feature
The Author Pages feature is disabled by default. Here's how to enable it:
- Go to “Authors”, then “Settings”, then “Author Pages”.
- Check the box “Enable author pages”.
PublishPress Authors will now replace the default WordPress author pages. The URLs of the pages will not change, but you can now customize the pages using the settings on this screen.
Your author page will appear with an author box on the top of the screen and the author's posts underneath. This image below was created using the “List” option for “Author pages layout”.
This next image shows the “Grid” layout for the author page of the same author:
What's next for PublishPress Authors?
There have been tons of improvements to PublishPress Authors recently. Here's a list of what's launched and what is coming next:
- Personal profile editing: LAUNCHED
- Improved shortcodes: LAUNCHED
- Customizable author pages: LAUNCHED
- Display all your authors on one screen: LAUNCHED
- Better support for the WordPress REST API. LAUNCHED
- More design and layout options for profiles. LAUNCHED
- Categories for Authors, so you can group them into “Writers”, “Photographers”, “Researchers” and other groups.
If you have a WordPress site with multiple authors, you should give PublishPress Authors a try. You'll find it's becoming the most complete solution for showing authors in WordPress.
Tim Slavin
This doesn’t allow us to customize the author URL, is that accurate? I ask because for security reasons, our logins have complicated usernames to make them more difficult to hack than the typical FirstNameLastName username pattern. I’m looking for a way to use that typical pattern and thus hiding the more secure complicated usernames that we use. Thx for any info.
Steve Burge
Hi Tim. The author URL is based on the username. Would it work to allow URLs to be customized one-by-one, or are you looking for a global pattern?