Contents
There are many ways that you can modify the look of your author pages. Some are not really specific to author pages, such as adding text to the top of the page; you can read about such simple modifications in the Category Templates article. This article will concentrate on modifications that are specific to author template files.
How to find an author template in WordPress?
The Template Hierarchy specifies that WordPress uses the first Template file it finds in your current Theme’s directory from the following list: author- {nicename}.php – If the author’s nice name were rami, WordPress would look for author-rami.php. author- {id}.php – If the author’s ID were 6, WordPress would look for author-6.php.
Which is the best template for a theme?
If you are building a theme designed for multiple authors, it might make sense to build an author.php template. In the author.php template you could provide more information about an author, their gravatar, pull in their social media sites, and then all posts written by them. This would be a step up from relying just on the archive.php file.
What should I include on my author page?
Social media profiles are always a good bet to include on your author page. Be sure to offer your authors the option to include links to their profiles on the “big” social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. You can include others, too, at your discretion.
This is done by setting up a variable called $curauth (Current Author). The usual way to do this is to put the following lines before The Loop in your template file: There are other ways to receive the query and assign the value of $curauth, if the above does not work for you.
What to do if there is no author template in WordPress?
If no template has been specifically created for that author, WordPress will display the authors information using the author.php template (which is what we are looking at today). If no author template of any description can be found WordPress defaults to the archive.php template and then the index.php template (if no archive template exists).
If you run a multi-author website, you may want to consider adding an author template to your website. Author templates help present more information about writers and make it easier for visitors to find other articles the author have written. In this post we will be breaking the author template down and showing you how you can improve it.