Authors

MediaPress Authors provides a solution for author attribution in WordPress, including multi-author and guest author functionality. This feature operates on the premise that authors and users are different entities and should be kept separate.

• Authors are used for content attribution, which may or may not be the person adding the content within the CMS
• Users are accounts within the CMS with permissions and roles that reflect their level of access

MediaPress Authors are managed as a taxonomy - similar to categories and tags - and separating authors from users has several advantages:

• Multiple authors can be assigned to a single post
• Guest authors never need to have a user account
• If a user needs to be removed from the CMS, the authors set on any content they created will be unaffected
• It’s easy to configure a generic/default author to attribute content to, if you don’t want a specific user name associated with posts

If you happen to be both a user and an author, you can set a default MediaPress Author in your user account, preventing the need to select this every time you create a new post.

Because WordPress users are traditionally treated as authors, several adjustments needed to ensure this works as expected:

• User profile pages are disabled by default (you are expected to use author term pages to display posts related to a MediaPress author)
• Custom blocks are available specifically for displaying MediaPress Author information in posts/templates
• Post information is filtered so that the author term is used in place of the original author (user) where appropriate

Bylines

A byline is used to attribute a piece of content to one or more authors. This is stored as post meta in addition to the taxonomy relationship linking MediaPress Authors to a post.

This allows a byline to remain static. For example, if an author has a specific job role ‘suffix’ associated with them, it will be saved within the byline, if that author information changes at a later date, the byline will reflect what it was at the time the post was created.

Filters/Actions

PHP

Filters

mediapress_authors_taxonomy_args

Allows adjustment of the arguments passed when registering the mediapress_authors taxonomy.

This may be used to:

• Disable author profile pages (set public to false)
• Adjust the rewrite permalinks for author profile pages (default is yoursite.com/profile/author-slug)
• Adjust the default author term that is applied when no author is selected for a post (by setting default_term)

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
args	array	The arguments passed to register_taxonomy

Usage

// Adjust the author profile url to `yoursite.com/author/author-slug`
add_filter( 'mediapress_authors_taxonomy_args', 'my_plugin_author_profile_url' );
function my_plugin_profile_url( array $args ): array {
  $args['rewrite']['slug'] = 'author';

  return $args;
}

// Redefine the default author term
add_filter( 'mediapress_authors_taxonomy_args', 'my_plugin_default_author' );
function my_plugin_default_author( array $args ): array {
  $args['default_term'] = [
    'name' => __( 'Editorial Team', 'my-plugin' ),
    'slug' => 'editorial-team',
    'description' => __( 'Our hard-working editorial team', 'my-plugin' ),
  ];

  return $args;
}

mediapress_authors_disable_core_author_page

Disable the core author/user pages.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
should_disable	bool	Should the core authors page be disabled

Usage

// Re-enable the core author page.
add_filter( 'mediapress_authors_disable_core_author_page', '__return_false' );

mediapress_authors_excluded_user_roles

Excluded user roles when running the CLI migration

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
excluded_roles	array<string>	User roles to exclude from the migration

Usage

add_filter( 'mediapress_authors_excluded_user_roles', 'my_plugin_user_roles_excluded_from_author_migrations' );

function my_plugin_user_roles_excluded_from_author_migrations( $roles ) {
  return array_merge( $roles, [ 'Author ] );
}

mediapress_authors_should_create_author

Should we create an author for the newly created user.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
should_create	bool	Should we create an author
user_id	int	user id to create author for
user_data	array<string, string>	The raw array of data passed to wp_insert_user.

Usage

add_filter(
  'mediapress_authors_should_create_author',
  'my_plugin_should_create_author',
  10,
  3,
);

function my_plugin_should_create_author( $should_create, $user_id, $user_data ): bool {
  if ( ! $should_create ) {
    return $should_create;
  }

  return $user_id !== 123 && $user_data['role'] !== 'author';
}

CLI

wp mediapress authors migrate users

Migrate all WordPress users to MediaPress authors terms.

wp mediapress authors migrate posts

Migrate all WordPress users posts to MediaPress Authors

Synopsis

wp mediapress authors migrate posts [--per-page=<per-page>]

Options

[--per-page=<per-page>]
    Number of posts per page when assigning terms to posts

wp mediapress authors migrate create

Create a MediaPress Author

Synopsis

wp mediapress authors create --name=<name> [--prefix=<prefix>] [--suffix=<suffix>]
  [--user-id=<user-id>] [--avatar=<avatar>]

Options

--name=<name>
  Author Name

[--prefix=<prefix>]
  Author's prefix e.g Dr

[--suffix=<suffix>]
  Author's suffix e.g ', Digital Editor'

[--user-id=<user-id>]
  User id to assign it to.

[--avatar=<avatar>]
  Attachment id of author