This article was originally published in January 2011.
I rewrote the article in November 2012 to take advantage of new features developed since then.
David Gray wrote a follow-up article in September 2014 which you might also want to review.
If you have a magazine-like website, you might need to specify multiple authors for a single post. There’s a great plugin called Co-Authors Plus that will let you do this.
Once installed, you can use many template tags, or you can use the get_coauthors() function to retrieve all the author data and use it however you like.
Authors Shortcode
The Post Info area of Genesis can be customized using a filter. We could drop the coauthors_posts_links() function in there to list authors and link to their archive pages, but it would be even better to create a shortcode to be used in the post info section. If that function isn’t available (ex: someone disabled the plugin), it will use the standard get_author_posts_url() instead.
We will create a shortcode called [post_authors_post_link] with the following parameters:
- between – what to display between authors, default is a comma
- between_last – what to display between the last two authors, default is “and”
- before – what to display before the list of authors, default is empty
- after – what to display after the list of authors, default is empty
To set up the shortcode, add the following to your functions.php file or core functionality plugin:
| /** | |
| * Post Authors Post Link Shortcode | |
| * | |
| * @author Bill Erickson | |
| * @link http://www.billerickson.net/wordpress-post-multiple-authors/ | |
| * | |
| * @param array $atts | |
| * @return string $authors | |
| */ | |
| function be_post_authors_post_link_shortcode( $atts ) { | |
| $atts = shortcode_atts( array( | |
| 'between' => null, | |
| 'between_last' => null, | |
| 'before' => null, | |
| 'after' => null | |
| ), $atts ); | |
| $authors = function_exists( 'coauthors_posts_links' ) ? coauthors_posts_links( $atts['between'], $atts['between_last'], $atts['before'], $atts['after'], false ) : $atts['before'] . get_author_posts_url() . $atts['after']; | |
| return $authors; | |
| } | |
| add_shortcode( 'post_authors_post_link', 'be_post_authors_post_link_shortcode' ); |
Now if we want to update the Genesis Post Info to display all post authors (with “by” right before the listing), we’d add this to functions.php:
| /** | |
| * List Authors in Genesis Post Info | |
| * | |
| * @author Bill Erickson | |
| * @link http://www.billerickson.net/wordpress-post-multiple-authors/ | |
| * | |
| * @param string $info | |
| * @return string $info | |
| */ | |
| function be_post_info( $info ) { | |
| $info = '[post_authors_post_link before="by "]'; | |
| return $info; | |
| } | |
| add_filter( 'genesis_post_info', 'be_post_info' ); |
Author Boxes
Genesis also has a feature called the Author Box that displays the author information at the bottom of the post. But this doesn’t use Co-Authors Plus, so if you have multiple authors only one will show up at the bottom.
First we’ll remove the Genesis Author Box. Then we’ll copy the code into our own function, but this one will accept an author ID field so we can render any author with it. Finally, we’ll create a function that checks to see if Co-Authors Plus is in use, and if it is, display author boxes for all authors; if it isn’t, display the author box for the normal post author.
| // Remove Genesis Author Box and load our own | |
| remove_action( 'genesis_after_post', 'genesis_do_author_box_single' ); | |
| add_action( 'genesis_after_post', 'be_author_box' ); | |
| /** | |
| * Load Author Boxes | |
| * | |
| * @author Bill Erickson | |
| * @link http://www.billerickson.net/wordpress-post-multiple-authors/ | |
| */ | |
| function be_author_box() { | |
| if( !is_single() ) | |
| return; | |
| if( function_exists( 'get_coauthors' ) ) { | |
| $authors = get_coauthors(); | |
| foreach( $authors as $author ) | |
| be_do_author_box( $author->data->ID ); | |
| } else { | |
| be_do_author_box( get_the_author_ID() ); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| /** | |
| * Display Author Box | |
| * Modified from Genesis to use an ID | |
| * | |
| * @author Bill Erickson | |
| * @link http://www.billerickson.net/wordpress-post-multiple-authors/ | |
| */ | |
| function be_do_author_box( $id = false ) { | |
| if( ! $id ) | |
| return; | |
| $authordata = get_userdata( $id ); | |
| $gravatar_size = apply_filters( 'genesis_author_box_gravatar_size', 70, $context ); | |
| $gravatar = get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( 'email', $id ), $gravatar_size ); | |
| $title = apply_filters( 'genesis_author_box_title', sprintf( '<strong>%s %s</strong>', __( 'About', 'genesis' ), get_the_author_meta( 'display_name', $id ) ), $context ); | |
| $description = wpautop( get_the_author_meta( 'description', $id ) ); | |
| /** The author box markup, contextual */ | |
| $pattern = $context == 'single' ? '<div class="author-box"><div>%s %s<br />%s</div></div><!-- end .authorbox-->' : '<div class="author-box">%s<h1>%s</h1><div>%s</div></div><!-- end .authorbox-->'; | |
| echo apply_filters( 'genesis_author_box', sprintf( $pattern, $gravatar, $title, $description ), $context, $pattern, $gravatar, $title, $description ); | |
| } |
Paul O'Connor says
Thanks for the code share Bill. Still working in 2018 with the Genesis Breakthrough theme and Co-Authors Plus.
I do seem to have to keep Genesis – Simple Edits turned on (with the following entry) otherwise it just displays the default theme post info:
Entry Meta (above content)
[post_date] By [post_authors_post_link] [post_comments]
The only issue I’m having is that I also have Genesis Portfolio-pro installed and the portfolio posts that are assigned to my new co-authors aren’t being registered. So when you click on the author name in a portfolio post (and they aren’t authors that have been assigned to normal blog posts) you just get a 404 error.
If I have assigned them to other normal blog posts, you get to see them but none of their portfolio posts.
When I look at the list of Guest Authors, none of their assigned portfolio posts are listed. only their blog posts.
Am I missing some connection to portfolio-pro?
Thank you.
Bill Erickson says
By default, WordPress only includes the ‘post’ content type on author archives. Add the following to your theme’s functions.php file (or a core functionality plugin) to include portfolio posts: https://gist.github.com/billerickson/e5ae64aa966cdee7f4baef846746bd66
Alli says
Why aren’t you using the $authordata at all?
Bill Erickson says
I’m not sure. I must have been using it for something else and stripped it out for the code example in this post.