You might be thinking along the lines of “why would I need to know How to hide author in wordPress”. Here’s why. If you manage WordPress Posts, you may want to hide a specific author’s name in a WordPress post.
Normally, blog posts will always show the author’s name alongside other meta-data such as publish date and categories. However, there are times that you may want to hide the author’s name. That’s what we’ll talk about in this article.
Why Hide Author in WordPress?
There are plenty of reasons why you should show the author’s name in a WordPress blog post. Including an author’s name can help your audience familiarize themselves with the author and their work. Displaying names can also help the audience differentiate posts from each other.
However, displaying names isn’t always a great idea to feature the author’s name in a blog post. An example of a situation is when multiple people collaborate on the article. Naming one person and thus giving them all the credit would be unfair to everyone involved.
Another example would be when an author writes about a controversial topic and doesn’t want their name associated with it. Both of these are very valid reasons for having to hide the author’s name.
By default, WordPress doesn’t have a built-in feature that removes the author’s names for you. This is where plugins and some basic coding comes in handy.
With that said, let’s look at the different ways you can remove “author” from WordPress post.
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How to Hide the Author in WordPress?
There are different ways you can hide the author name in your WordPress post, we’ll outline some of them below. The first method is through a plugin. This method is the easiest way you can remove an author’s name from your posts.
Use Hide/Remove Metadata Plugin
We recommend this method to anyone who isn’t the most tech-savvy and wants to save time and energy. Here are the steps to follow.
Step 1:
Find the Plugins tab on the left-side admin panel, click it and select the Add New option.
Step 2:
Next, search for the plugin Hide/Remove Metadata in the search box. Once you do that, other relevant plugins will come up that you may deem useful.
Step 3:
Scroll down and locate the Hide/Remove Metadata plugin. Click the Install Now button and activate the plugin. Now you’ve installed the needed plugin to remove author names.
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How to Use Hide/Remove Metadata to Hide Author Names
This plugin is very versatile and easy to use. Our main concern is hiding author names and it does just that. Follow the easy steps below to know-how.
Step 1:
On the left-hand side admin panel, locate the Hide/Remove Metadata plugin. Click it.
Step 2:
Once you click the plugin, you’ll see a menu with two tab options; Features and Dashboard. The Features tab contains all the information you need about the features of the plugin. Where we want to go is the Dashboard tab.
Step 3:
In the Dashboard tab, locate the Hide Author switch and click it. Make sure that it’s colored green, indicating it’s activated. There are also other options you can toggle to hide such as published dates.
Step 4:
Once you’re finished with your changes, click the Save Changes button.
And that’s it, you’ve hidden the author’s name on your post. Refresh the page on your website to see the result. An important thing to take note of is that depending on your theme, the text “Written by” or “Author” may still appear with blank space next to them.
There is no way to address this except editing your chosen theme. We recommend this method for removing author names as anyone can do it. You simply need to install a plugin and flick a switch. This is why plugins are a huge part of building a WordPress website.
Hide/Remove Metadata also provides various other options related to metadata. The Features tab of the plugin will have all the information you need.
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Remove Author Names Via Coding
This method is a little more advanced and riskier so making backups is a must before beginning the process. Access to your cPanel is also needed, this is provided by your web host when you make an account.
If you don’t know how to access your cPanel, please contact your WebHost for detailed instructions. Removing the author’s name via code can be quite challenging, depending on what kind of theme you’re using.
If you’re not comfortable with coding, we highly recommend using the plugin method above. With that said, let’s jump into it.
Step 1:
The first thing to do is to log into your cPanel. Once inside, locate the File Manager option. The File Manager will let you access all the files currently related to your website.
Step 2:
Next, you will want to locate your theme’s functions.php file. Locate the public_html directory and click it. After, click the wp-content folder. Click the themes folder and then locate the folder of the theme you’re currently using. There you will find the functions.php file, right-click on it and select Edit.
For those who aren’t using the default WordPress theme, the information may not be located in the functions.php file and instead will be in the templates-tags.php file; edit that instead.
Step 3:
Once you press edit, a window will pop up. This window will warn you to create a backup before doing anything else. Ensure that you’ve done so and continue. Backing up your files will allow you to revert any changes easily if something wrong happens.
Once done, a new window will pop up containing strings of code in the file. Don’t be intimidated as you only need to change a few lines to remove the author. Here is the code you need to locate. Make sure that you don’t alter any other code besides the one below.
// Get the author name; wrap it in a link.
$byline = sprintf(
_x( ‘by %s’, ‘post author’, ‘twentyseventeen’ ),
‘<span class=”author vcard”><a class=”url fn n” href=”‘ . esc_url( get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( ‘ID’ ) ) ) . ‘”>’ . get_the_author() . ‘</a></span>’
);
// Finally, let’s write all of this to the page.
echo ‘<span class=”posted-on”>’ . twentyseventeen_time_link() . ‘</span><span class=”byline”> ‘ . $byline . ‘</span>’; // WPCS: XSS OK.
}
The code you’ll see may be very different, depending on the changes you’ve done to your website. The only thing you need to delete is the lines related to the author. If you have the default WordPress theme, your code should look like the one below after editing it down.
// Finally, let’s write all of this to the page.
echo ‘<span class=”posted-on”>’ . twentyseventeen_time_link() . ‘</span><span class=”byline”> ‘ . $byline . ‘</span>’; // WPCS: XSS OK.
}
Conclusion
Congratulations, you’ve successfully removed the author’s name on your blog posts. The method we highly recommend using for most people is the first one. The plugin method is easily the most convenient one, especially for those who aren’t tech-savvy enough for coding.
