How to change the author of a WordPress post

Short answer: open the post in the editor, find the Author dropdown, and pick a different user. In the block editor it is in the Post tab of the settings sidebar; in the classic editor it is in the Author box, which you may first have to enable from Screen Options at the top of the screen. To change the author on many posts at once, go to the posts list, tick the posts, choose Edit from the Bulk actions menu, click Apply, and set the author for all of them together. Only users who can write posts – Author role and above – appear in the dropdown.

Every WordPress post has an author attached to it. That author is whoever was logged in when the post was created, and by default it never changes on its own. But there are plenty of reasons you would want to change it: a staff writer left the company and you need to reassign their articles, a guest contributor’s drafts should publish under an in-house byline, or a post was simply created under the wrong account.

This is a quick, low-risk change. WordPress has built it into the editor and into the bulk-edit tools. Here is how to do it for a single post and for a batch.

Change the author of a single post#

In the block editor#

The block editor (Gutenberg) is what you get on a standard modern WordPress install. All of the steps below happen inside the admin area, so if you are not already there, sign in to the WordPress dashboard first.

1. Open the post you want to edit, or open a new one.
2. On the right is the settings sidebar. If it is hidden, click the gear icon in the top right to show it.
3. Make sure the Post tab is selected, not the Block tab.
4. Look for the Author dropdown – it sits near the Status, Publish date, and Template settings.
5. Click it and choose the new author from the list.
6. Click Update (or Publish) to save the change.

That is the whole process. The byline on the front end will now show the new author.

In the classic editor#

If your site uses the Classic Editor plugin, the Author control lives in a different place – and it may be hidden.

1. Open the post in the editor.
2. Look at the very top right of the screen for the Screen Options tab and click it.
3. In the panel that drops down, tick the Author checkbox if it is not already ticked.
4. The Author box now appears below the main editor (you may need to scroll down).
5. Pick the new author from the dropdown in that box.
6. Click Update to save.

The Screen Options panel is the same per-user settings tool used to tidy other admin screens – if you have ever cleaned up your WordPress dashboard, it is the same tab. Its settings are stored per user, so if a colleague does not see the Author box, they need to enable it on their own account.

The Quick Edit shortcut#

You do not always have to open the full editor. From the Posts list (Posts > All Posts):

1. Hover over the post’s title – a row of links appears beneath it.
2. Click Quick Edit.
3. An inline panel opens with the post’s main fields, including an Author dropdown.
4. Choose the new author and click Update.

Quick Edit is the fastest way to fix the author on one post without loading the editor.

Change the author on many posts at once (bulk edit)#

When a writer leaves and you need to move twenty or two hundred posts to someone else, editing them one at a time is not practical. WordPress has a bulk author change built into the posts list.

1. Go to Posts > All Posts.
2. To work through one person’s posts, click their name in the author column, or use the author filter at the top – this narrows the list to just their posts.
3. Tick the checkbox next to each post you want to change. To select everything on the page, tick the box in the column header.
4. From the Bulk actions dropdown above the list, choose Edit.
5. Click Apply.
6. A bulk-edit panel opens. It has an Author dropdown – set it to the new author.
7. Click Update.

Every selected post is reassigned in one save.

Two things to keep in mind with bulk edit:

• It only affects the posts visible and selected on the current page. If a writer has 300 posts and the list shows 20 per page, you are changing 20 at a time. To move faster, raise the per-page count from Screen Options on the posts list, or filter to that author and work through the pages.
• Bulk edit changes the author and nothing else about the content. It does not touch the post body, the URL slug, the publish date, or the categories.

What happens when you delete the original author#

Reassigning posts is closely tied to removing a user. When you delete a WordPress user who has written posts, WordPress does not let those posts become orphaned – it stops and asks you what to do with their content:

• Attribute all content to an existing user – pick someone from the dropdown, and every post that belonged to the deleted user moves to them.
• Delete all content – the posts are deleted along with the user. This is rarely what you want.

Always choose attribute to an existing user unless you are certain the content should go. This is the safe way to handle a staff departure: reassign first (or let the delete-user screen do it), then remove the account. Deleting the user without reassigning – and picking the delete-content option by mistake – destroys their articles.

Because of this, author management and user management are really the same task. Before you delete anyone, it is worth reading WordPress user roles and user management, which covers the delete-and-reassign flow and why you should never just leave a departed colleague’s account sitting dormant.

Why a user might not appear in the Author dropdown#

The Author dropdown does not list every user on the site. It only shows users whose role can write posts – that means Author, Editor, and Administrator.

If the person you want to assign is not in the list, their role is too low. A Subscriber or a Contributor with no published-post capability will not appear. The fix is to raise their role – go to Users > All Users, edit that person, and change their role to Author or higher. Once they can write posts, they show up in the dropdown.

This is by design: WordPress will not attribute a post to someone who is not allowed to have posts in the first place.

Does changing the author change the URL?#

Usually no – and this is a common worry. The post’s own URL (its slug) does not change when you change the author. A post at /blog/my-article stays at /blog/my-article regardless of who the author is.

There is one exception. If your permalink structure includes the author – some sites use a structure with /%author%/ in it – then the post URL does contain the author’s username, and reassigning the post will change that URL. That is uncommon, because author-based permalinks are not a default and are not great for SEO, as explained in WordPress permalinks: how to configure them for SEO. It is still worth a quick check of your structure. If reassigning a post does change its URL, how to change the WordPress URL slug covers handling that safely with a redirect so old links do not break.

Separately, every author also has an author archive page – a page that lists all their posts, usually at /author/their-username/ . Reassigning a post moves it from one author’s archive to another’s. The post itself does not move; only which archive lists it changes.

Common mistakes#

• Looking for the Author box and not finding it (classic editor). It is hidden by default. Enable it from the Screen Options tab at the top of the screen.
• Expecting a low-role user in the dropdown. Subscribers and most Contributors cannot be assigned as a post author. Raise their role to Author or above first.
• Deleting a departed writer without reassigning. The delete-user screen offers “attribute content to another user” – always use it. Picking “delete all content” destroys their posts.
• Thinking bulk edit changed every post. Bulk edit only touches the posts selected on the current page. Check the per-page count and the author filter so you do not miss a chunk.
• Confusing the display name with the username. The dropdown and the byline show the user’s display name, but the author archive URL uses their username (the user_nicename). They can be different.

How Hostney handles this#

Changing a post author is a WordPress-level action – it happens inside wp-admin no matter where the site is hosted – so there is nothing Hostney-specific about the dropdown itself. Where Hostney helps is around it.

Author changes, especially bulk reassignments when a writer leaves, are exactly the kind of edit you want to be able to undo. Every Hostney site keeps daily snapshot backups, so if a bulk author change selects the wrong posts or you reassign a batch you did not mean to, you can restore the site to before the change and try again. The change is database-only and reversible from a snapshot.

If several people manage the same site, Hostney’s delegate access lets you give each person their own login to the control panel without sharing one account. Combined with proper WordPress roles, that keeps the author attribution honest: each writer logs in as themselves, so posts are attributed correctly from the start and you have far less reassigning to do later.

Summary#

Changing the author of a WordPress post is built into the editor. For a single post, use the Author dropdown in the block editor’s Post tab, the Author box in the classic editor (enable it from Screen Options first), or the Quick Edit link in the posts list. For many posts at once, select them in the Posts list, choose Edit from Bulk actions, and set one author for all of them. Only users with the Author role or higher appear in the dropdown, so raise a user’s role if they are missing. And when a writer leaves, reassign their posts – or use the delete-user screen’s “attribute content to another user” option – before deleting the account, so their articles are never lost.