How to Change the Author in WordPress (2026 Guide)

To change the author in WordPress, open the post, find the Author field in the settings sidebar (or the Author box in the Classic Editor), pick a different user, then update the post. The one rule that trips people up: the person you want to credit must already exist as a user on the site with an author-capable role. Everything else is a two-click job.

This guide walks through every method, including bulk edits across hundreds of posts, guest bylines without new user accounts, and what to do when the author dropdown simply isn’t there.

Before You Change Anything: How WordPress Handles Authorship

WordPress stores authorship as a user ID attached to each post, not as a text field you type into. That’s why you can’t just overwrite a name, and it’s also why the byline links to an author archive page at a URL like /author/username/. Changing the author reassigns the post and moves it onto a different archive.

Only users with a role of Author, Editor, Administrator or (with the right capability) Contributor appear in the dropdown. Subscribers do not, which is the single most common reason a name is missing from the list.

Method 1: Change the Author in the Block Editor

The block editor has been the default since WordPress 5.0, so most sites in 2026 use this path.

1. Open the post you want to reassign.
2. Click the settings gear icon in the top right, then open the Post tab.
3. Expand the Summary panel and look for the Author field.
4. Select the new author from the dropdown menu.
5. Click Update to save.

The change is instant on the front end once caching clears. On a stack running LiteSpeed Cache, the post page usually refreshes within seconds of the save, though a full-page CDN purge can take a minute or two.

Method 2: Change the Author in the Classic Editor

If your site still runs the Classic Editor plugin, the Author box may be hidden by default. Click Screen Options at the top right of the edit screen and tick the Author checkbox. A metabox appears below the content area with a dropdown, and you pick the new author there before clicking Update.

Method 3: Use Quick Edit (Fastest for One-Off Fixes)

Quick Edit is the fastest route when you don’t need to open the post at all. Go to Posts > All Posts in the WordPress admin menu, hover over a row, then click Quick Edit. The inline panel shows title, slug, date, categories and an Author dropdown, so you can reassign and save in about five seconds.

This works on pages too, under Pages > All Pages, and on most custom post types that support the author field.

Method 4: Bulk Change the Author on Multiple Posts

When a writer leaves and you need to move 40 or 400 posts, don’t do it one at a time. WordPress has bulk reassignment built in, and it’s genuinely reliable.

1. Go to Posts > All Posts.
2. Filter by the old author using the author column link, or use the date and category filters to narrow the list.
3. Set Number of items per page to 200 under Screen Options so you can select more at once.
4. Tick the checkbox in the header row to select everything shown.
5. Choose Edit from the Bulk actions dropdown and click Apply.
6. Pick the new author, then click Update.

There’s a second bulk method that catches everything at once: delete the old user under Users > All Users and, when prompted, choose Attribute all content to another user. That reassigns every post, page and custom post type they own. Take a backup first, because it can’t be undone from the dashboard.

We cover this topic in more depth in How to Change Your Website Title in Google Search Results (WordPress, 2026).

We cover this topic in more depth in How to Change the Color of Text in WordPress: The 2026 Guide.

For large libraries, we recommend testing the bulk edit on a staging copy first. If your workflow already runs through Git-based deployments and staging environments, push the database change only after you’ve confirmed the archive pages still resolve.

Adding a New Author to WordPress

If the person you want to credit isn’t in the dropdown yet, create the account first. Go to Users > Add New, fill in the username and email, then set the role. Roles matter more than people expect:

• Contributor: writes and edits own drafts, cannot publish.
• Author: publishes and manages their own posts only.
• Editor: publishes and manages all posts, including other people’s.
• Administrator: full site control, including plugins and users.

The official WordPress roles and capabilities documentation lists every permission per role if you need to audit access on a multi-writer site.

Credit Authors Without Creating User Accounts

Sometimes you want a guest byline without handing out a login. Two well-maintained plugins handle this: Co-Authors Plus and PublishPress Authors. Both let you create guest author profiles that carry a name, bio and avatar but no dashboard access, and both support multiple authors on a single post.

PublishPress Authors also gives you control over how change author pages and author pages URLs behave, which is useful on magazine-style sites with dozens of contributors.

When You Can’t Change the Author in WordPress

If the dropdown is missing or empty, run through these checks in order:

• The target user has a Subscriber role, so they don’t appear. Change their role to Author or higher.
• You’re logged in as an Author rather than an Editor or Administrator, and Authors can’t reassign posts.
• The Author metabox is unticked in Screen Options (Classic Editor only).
• The custom post type was registered without 'author' in its supports array, so it has no author field at all.
• A page builder or membership plugin is overriding the editor sidebar. Deactivate plugins one by one on staging to isolate it.

This is the question that fills the Reddit threads, and in our support queue role permissions account for the large majority of cases.

Edit the Author Profile: Name, Bio and Gravatar

Reassigning a post only swaps the account. To control what readers actually see, edit the profile itself under Users > Profile or Users > All Users > Edit.

• Display name publicly as: set this to the full name, not the username, for security and readability.
• Biographical Info: 40 to 80 words with credentials works well on most themes.
• Profile Picture: WordPress pulls avatars from Gravatar based on the user’s email address, unless your theme or plugin allows a local upload.
• Website: links from the author byline on many themes.

The SEO Angle Most Guides Skip

Reassigning posts moves them between author archives, and if you later delete or rename a user, the old archive URL can 404. Set a 301 redirect from the retired author archive to the new one, or noindex author archives entirely if you run a single-writer blog and they duplicate your main feed.

Bylines also feed experience and expertise signals. Google’s guidance on creating helpful, people-first content explicitly asks whether content is presented with clear sourcing and author background, so an accurate byline with a real bio is worth the five minutes. Watch your traffic analytics for a week after a mass reassignment to catch any archive pages that lost their crawl path, and fix internal references using the same approach we cover in our guide to adding internal links in WordPress.

If a byline overhaul is part of a wider rebuild, fold it into the plan you set out during your WordPress website redesign rather than doing it twice.

Hiding the Author Byline

Some themes let you toggle the byline in the Customizer under Blog or Post Meta settings. Block themes handle it in the Site Editor: open the single post template, select the Post Author block, and remove it. Failing both, a short CSS rule targeting the byline class hides it visually, though the author data still exists in the database.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I edit my author profile in WordPress?

Go to Users > Profile in the admin menu, which takes about 60 seconds to complete. Update your display name, biographical info and website, then click Update Profile. Your avatar comes from Gravatar unless your theme supports local uploads.

How do I change the author?

Open the post, set the Author field in the settings sidebar to a different user, then click Update: three clicks in total. In the Classic Editor, enable the Author box under Screen Options first. Quick Edit from the Posts list does the same thing without opening the post.

How can I bulk change the author of a post in WordPress?

Select up to 200 posts at once in Posts > All Posts, choose Edit from Bulk actions, then set the new author and click Update. To reassign every post a user owns in one step, delete the user and select “Attribute all content to” another account.

How do I change the author settings?

Author permissions are controlled by roles, editable per user under Users > All Users. Change the role to Author, Editor or Administrator depending on how much control they need. Plugins like PublishPress Capabilities let you fine-tune individual capabilities without writing code.

Running a Multi-Author WordPress Site?

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