## Co-authors and guest authors
URL: https://hub.jkdevstudio.com/knowledge-base/integration/co-authors-integration
Updated: 2026-09-06
Summary: Credit several authors on one post, add guest authors who have no WordPress account, and have the byline update everywhere at once.
This integration lets you credit more than one author on a post. All of them appear in the byline alongside the main author.
It is self contained, with no third party plugin required, and it works for posts. Pages and other content types are not affected.
**It is our answer to the Co-Authors plugin, not a wrapper around it.**
The well known co-authors plugin solves the same problem in a way that never quite fits a theme: it brings its own templating assumptions, its own markup, and a byline you then have to fight to make look like the rest of the site. Ours stores the authors and hands them to the theme, which draws them in its own byline, its own listings and its own author cards. Nothing is pasted in, and there is no second plugin to keep updated.
It has no page in the Integrations block: it does one thing completely, and there is nothing global to configure.
## Two kinds of author
Everything else builds on this distinction.
:::deflist
Site users
: People with a WordPress account. The normal case for an editorial team.
Guest authors
: People without an account. An invited writer, an interviewee, the author of a reprint. You do not need to give them [admin access](https://jkdevstudio.com/who-needs-admin-access/), and you should not.
:::
To a reader, there is no difference. Both look identical in the byline. The only difference is where the profile comes from.
## How you use it
Everything happens on the post itself, in a field group in the sidebar. That is the whole workflow.
The first field selects co-authors. The list holds both site users and guest authors together, so you can mix them and put them in the order you want.
The second field is a switch that removes the main author from the byline. It is for a post written entirely by a guest, where an editor account only published it.
**A post can never end up with no author.**
With no co-authors selected, the switch that hides the main author does nothing at all. The safeguard exists because the two fields are independent, and the combination that would leave a post unattributed is exactly the one somebody eventually tries.
## Guest authors
They are created in the admin as their own list under users, one entry per person.
A profile holds a name, a photo, a job title, a biography, a website and a profile page address.
An email address is asked for only so a standard avatar can be pulled in. It is never displayed anywhere on the site.
Every guest gets their own page collecting their material, the same as a regular author.
## Where the byline appears
Co-authors show wherever the theme displays authorship: on the post itself, and in post listings across the site.
The thing to take away: you do not enable the byline separately in each place. Select co-authors on the post and they appear everywhere the theme shows an author.
## Integrations are part of the theme
**This integration is licensed with the theme, not on its own.**
Integrations are premium functionality for customers running a Pro license of one of our themes. They are written against our themes and expect them, and we cannot support or take responsibility for what one does inside somebody else's theme. See [how theme integrations work](https://hub.jkdevstudio.com/knowledge-base/integration/how-theme-integrations-work).
## Common questions
Does a guest author need a WordPress account?
No, and avoiding exactly that is the point of guest authors: a byline is a credit, not a reason to hand somebody a login to your site.
Can I control the order of the names?
Yes, the order you select them in is the order they appear in.
Does a co-author's archive include posts they co-wrote?
Yes, their page collects everything they are credited on rather than only the posts they are the main author of.
A co-author I selected does not appear in the byline
Check the post first, since the selection lives in the sidebar field group and an unsaved post has nothing to show yet, and if the selection is saved but the byline still shows one name then the place you are looking at most likely has its author display switched off in its own settings. A guest whose profile was unpublished or deleted is also dropped from the byline rather than printed as a broken name.
What happens to the credits if I remove the integration?
The byline goes back to the single WordPress author and the stored co-author data stays where it is, so reactivating the integration restores every credit exactly as it was.