Blog authors add credibility and build trust in your brand. Besides, they allow readers to see someone behind the content rather than a faceless entity.
Creating authors in allows different people to contribute content to your blog. Each has separate accounts and roles.
However, different Blog editions offer different ways of managing authors. We'll describe all cases to help you find the best option for your blog.
Note: some of the author's options described here are available only in the Blog Extra.
How to Configure Blog Authors in Magento?
Before you start creating blog authors, you need to fill out some basic settings. They help you configure the template for the blog authors pages, set whether to include them in the blog sitemap and enable the author's block on posts.
General settings
In general settings, you define whether to display the author's name on the blog posts at all and whether to add the author's block.
1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog and find the Author section.
2. Choose whether to Display Author Information. If you disable this option no information about the post's author will be displayed on the blog post page (neither at the top of bottom of the post).
Once you enable author information complete the following options:
- Display Author Block — displays author's bio block, including photo, description, and social links.
- Display Post List by Author — enables author's page with all the author's posts. If you enable this option you also need to set the Post List Template.
- Default Robots — defines whether search robots can index and display author pages in the search results. On detailed information about the robot directives check our Magento blog meta robots guide.
Once you finish, don't forget to save the settings.
Latest posts by author
If you want to encourage people to read more of the author's articles directly on the post's page, enable the Latest From Author option. You configure it in the post view settings.
However, it doesn't require more than choosing a template and a number of posts to display.
That's how this section looks on frontend:
Blog authors in the XML sitemap
Finally, you can also include authors in the blog XML sitemap. For that, you need to scroll down to the XML Sitemap section. However, check out the blog sitemap settings first.
Pro tip: make sure that you don't include authors' pages in the sitemap if you've set NOINDEX robots for them in the general settings. It could send confusing signals to the search crawlers.
How to Create Blog Authors in Magento?
Different Blog Extension editions offer different author options. So let's get into more detail about how you can create them based on the Blog plan you use.
Authors in Blog Base and Plus
In these two editions, there is no separate author section. So, basically, blog authors are Magento admin users. All you need to do to create a blog author is create the admin user.
Then you can assign admin users to blog posts in the post display settings.
The only place where authors will be visible in this scenario is at the top of the blog post.
Authors in Blog Extra
As you might have guessed, there is a separate section to manage authors in the Extra edition. It allows you to display the author's block, social media links and author's page.
To create blog authors in Blog Extra check this short video or follow the steps below.
1. Navigate to Content > Blog > Authors and press the Add New Author button.
2. Fill out the general Author Information.
- Enable the author.
- Enter First and Last Names.
- Set the author's Email and Role.
Note: you can grant different blog authors access to different sections of the blog by configuring blog access control list.
- Upload the Featured Image.
3. Create Content that will be displayed on the author's page on the storefront.
4. Configure Display Settings.
- Choose the Template for the blog author page if you want it to be different from the one you've set in the config section before.
- Set the number of posts displayed on the blog author page in the Post Per Page field.
Note: if you don't set any number in the Post Per Page field, the extension will take this number from the post list configuration.
5. Choose what Website to assign this author to.
6. Create a Short Content that will be displayed in the author's block on post pages.
7. Set Social Media URLs such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for the author's block.
8. Configure Search Engine Optimization which is standard for all Magento 2 pages. Here you set the URL Key and Meta Information for the author's page. Additionally, you can change the Meta Robots for this particular author's page.
Note: by default all author pages have meta robots you've set at the beginning of this article.
9. Configure the Design and Custom Design Update.
In the Design section, you can choose the Layout and the Layout Update XML. Customer Design Update correspondingly allows you to predetermine the design update.
Therefore you can choose the New Theme, Layout together with the Layout Update XML and the Date you want the custom design to be changed.
Once you save the author you can assign them to the post and check the author's block on the post page.
When you follow the read more link you are directed to the author's page :
Co-Authors
If you have multiple authors contributing to the same article, you can assign all of them to it. Add co-authors the same way you add authors to the blog posts.
Just navigate to any blog post, find the Co-authors option in the Display Settings and set the co-author.
The co-author is displayed at the top of the blog post.
Besides, if you enable the author's block, the co-author should appear next to the main author block.
Author's List Page
Last but not least Magento blog author option is the author's list widget. It allows you to create a separate CMS page and simply add the Author's Widget there.
It will feature all your blog authors on one page.
Additionally, you can use the Custom HTML option to add the author's list to the blog sidebar.
The result should be the following:
