Notating Guest Bloggers

See if this helps:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags

I had tried


<?php the_author() ?>
<?php if (the_author() != "My Name") { echo ", Guest Blogger";) ?>


And instead of using the_author() as a variable in the comparison – it outputs the_author() – showing it twice.

What causes this problem is the fact that the_author() actually outputs text instead of returning a variable for usage. Try something like this:

$variable = the_author();

and then use $variable for the comparison. It probably won’t work. But at least you tried!

Same result:


Posted by <?php the_author(); ?>


<?php
$author_name = the_author();
if ($author_name != "My Name") echo ", Guest Blogger";
?>


Still produced My Name My Name for me and then Author Name Author Name, Guest Blogger for the non-me bloggers.

Any other ideas?

The problem is that all of the author template functions echo. The solution: output buffering.

<?php
ob_start();
the_author();
$my_author = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_flush();
if ($my_author!='My Name') { echo ', Guest Blogger'; }
?>

This will output the_author once and then append ', Guest Blogger' if the author is not 'My Name'.

Alright – now I get to learn about output buffering – thank you for the link and help… gonna go try out the code now – be back in a few minutes to report back.

Holy crap it worked! Thanks!

Added to wiki:

https://wiki.www.ads-software.com/?pagename=NotateGuestBloggers

I don’t believe it. I’ve been Kafkaesqui’d.

An easier solution:

Figure out what your author ID is. Say it’s 2.

<?php
the_author();
if ($post->post_author != 2) { echo ', Guest Blogger'; }
?>

Output buffering is neat, but a bit overkill here.

Thanks – I’ll fix the wiki entry.

(20 seconds later)

Oh, you already did! Thanks!