How to Change the Author in WordPress (Easily)

A published post can carry the wrong byline for all sorts of ordinary reasons. A guest post gets filed under the admin account, a writer leaves the team, or one person starts a draft and someone else finishes it.

The danger is a wrong byline sitting on a post that’s already ranking and pulling in traffic. Every reader who lands there sees the wrong person credited for the work.

Fixing that byline takes only a few clicks, but how to change the author in WordPress depends on where you’re working. Quick Edit, the block editor, and the Classic Editor each put the Author control in a different place. Fixing one post is also a different job from fixing a writer’s whole back catalog.

Below are the four places WordPress lets you change the author of a post, plus what that change actually affects on your site. Once the bylines are right, you can also find out which of your authors pulls in the most traffic.

In This Article:

How to Change the Author of a Post in Quick Edit

Quick Edit changes the author of a post or page straight from the Posts list, without opening the post itself. That makes it the fastest route when the byline is the only thing you need to fix.

Head to the All Posts or All Pages screen and hover over the post you’d like to change the author for. A row of links appears under the title — Edit, Quick Edit, Trash, and View:

Clicking Quick Edit opens an inline panel with the post’s title, slug, and date — plus an Author dropdown. Select the author you want:

Then click the blue Update button to save the new byline:

Only users whose role lets them publish posts show up in that dropdown — Author, Editor, and Administrator. So the list can be shorter than your full user list.

How to Change the Author in the WordPress Block Editor

In the block editor, the Author control sits in the Settings sidebar, grouped with the post’s status, slug, and template. It’s a quick change once you know which row to click.

Open the post you want to reassign, then make sure the Settings sidebar is showing on the right. Under the Post tab, you’ll find an Author row in the summary list, between Slug and Template.

Click the name in that row and an Author popover opens, with a dropdown for choosing a different user. Pick the author you want, then close the popover.

For a post that is already published, the button in the top-right header reads Save. Click it and the new byline goes live:

If your editor screen looks nothing like this, your site isn’t running the block editor at all. The Classic Editor handles the Author control differently.

How to Change the Author in the Classic Editor

The Classic Editor keeps the Author control in a meta box below the editor, and WordPress hides that box by default. So the first step isn’t picking an author — it’s making the Author box appear.

Plenty of sites still work this way: the Classic Editor plugin has more than 8 million active installs and is officially maintained.

Start by opening the page or post you want to change the author for, and look for the Screen Options tab at the top right:

Clicking the tab opens a panel of checkboxes that control which boxes appear on the edit screen. Make sure the Author checkbox is checked:

Now scroll down below the editor box to find the Author dropdown, and choose the author you want from it:

With the new author chosen, click the Update button to save the byline on a post that’s already published.

How to Change the Author on Several Posts at Once with Bulk Edit

Bulk Edit changes the author across a whole batch of posts in a single save. That’s the route to take when a departing writer leaves dozens of published articles behind. The Users screen lists a post count beside each account, so you can see how big the batch is before you start.

On the All Posts screen, check the box next to every post you want to reassign. Then open the Bulk actions dropdown above the list, choose Bulk edit, and click Apply.

The Bulk Edit panel opens with your selected posts listed by title and an Author dropdown on the right. That dropdown starts on — No Change —, so no byline moves until you pick a name from it:

Choose the new author, click Update, and WordPress rewrites the byline on every post in the batch.

To work through one writer’s posts, click their name in the Author column of the Posts screen first. That filters the list down to their posts. The list still runs across pages, though, and the checkbox in the header row selects only what’s on the page in front of you, so a long back catalog takes a few rounds.

What Changing the Author Does — and What It Doesn’t

Reassigning a post moves it from one user account to another, and that’s a narrower change than it sounds. Knowing the limits saves you hunting through settings for a fix that lives somewhere else.

Start with the name itself. The author name your visitors read in the byline is the account’s Display Name, which lives on that user’s own profile under Users → Profile.

So if a byline reads jsmith instead of a real name, the post is already on the right account. The fix is in that profile, not in the post editor. In this case, you’d simply want to update jsmith to the full name.

Deleting a user account moves posts too. Remove someone who has published content and WordPress stops to ask what should happen to it. One of the choices, Attribute all posts and links to, passes their whole catalog to another user you pick.

On the front end, a reassignment also moves the post between author archives. It starts appearing on the new author’s archive page and drops off the previous author’s.

What a reassignment doesn’t touch is the data Google Analytics has already collected. Past reports don’t get rewritten, so views recorded before the change stay credited to the author who held the byline at the time.

How to See Which Authors Get the Most Traffic

Once your bylines are accurate, they can tell you which of your writers gets the most page views. MonsterInsights, the WordPress analytics plugin, reports that on the Author card under Insights » Reports » Dimensions.

The card ranks your top 10 authors by Views and opens on the last 30 days. A date picker at the top changes the window.

The card leaves out page views that carry no author value. That makes it a leaderboard rather than a full roster of everyone who writes for you. It answers an editorial question: whose work to commission more of, and which bylines to promote harder.

The Author card needs the Dimensions addon, which comes with a Pro or higher license. Setup is a one-time job, and you won’t open Google Analytics for any of it. MonsterInsights creates the matching custom definition in your connected property for you.

One condition worth knowing: with the EU Compliance addon active, MonsterInsights turns author tracking off on purpose. That keeps author and user ID values out of Google Analytics.

Your category, post type, and tag dimensions keep working. We walk through those in our guide on how to track WordPress categories and tags.

Author is one of several Google Analytics custom dimensions the plugin can fill in for you. For the setup itself, step through How to Set Up Author Tracking in Google Analytics (Easy Way).

Frequently Asked Questions About Changing the Author in WordPress

Why is there no Author dropdown in Quick Edit?

WordPress hides the Author control when your site has only one user who can publish. With nobody to switch the post to, the dropdown has nothing to offer. Add a second user with an Author or Editor role and it appears on the next page load.

How do I change the author name that shows on a post without reassigning it?

Edit that user’s Display Name under Users → Profile. WordPress prints the display name in the byline, so updating it changes how the author appears everywhere that account is credited. There is no per-post name field to edit.

Can I change the author of several posts at once?

Yes. Select the posts on the All Posts screen, choose Edit from the Bulk actions dropdown, and click Apply. Set the Author dropdown in the Bulk Edit panel that opens, then click Update once to change the byline across the whole batch.

What happens to someone’s posts if I delete their WordPress user account?

WordPress asks before it removes anything. One option attributes all of that user’s content to another user you pick, reassigning every post in one step. The other deletes the content along with the account, which is the riskier choice if any of those posts still get traffic.

Do I need a plugin to change the author in WordPress?

No. Quick Edit, the block editor, the Classic Editor, and Bulk Edit are all built into WordPress core. You need a plugin only for something core doesn’t do, like crediting two writers on one post or reporting traffic by author.

We hope this tutorial helped you get the right name onto the right post. Here are a few more beginner-friendly guides worth reading next:

• Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics for Publishers & Bloggers
• How to Track Outbound Link Clicks in GA4 + WordPress
• How to Find Most Popular Pages on a Website: Complete Guide
• How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress
• Google Analytics Permissions Guide + How to Add a User

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