author profile link / multi-user

Useful links (and perhaps ideas):
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags#Author_tags
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Author_Templates

Moshu, I appreciate the information, but I’ve already looked at those tags. The issue isn’t about something like the_author_description or any Template Tag thereof, but how to manipulate those tags.

See, I could do something like creating a author.php, that isn’t a problem, hell I’ve already created a page via the backend that I can link to anyways per author. The problem I run into is linking those names from the aforementioned mainpage to the profile page itself. I could perhaps do a <?php the_author_url() ?>, but then that would mean I would be in a pickle when it came time to point that statement to the correct profile/page url because it would have to statically link to a url and if it was just myself posting to this site that wouldn’t be a problem, but the fact that I have multiple authors it creates a dynamic issue involving a decision process that must take place on the part of WP apart from the examples mentioned in Author Templates such as ?author=2 , ?author_name=joe , /author/joe/ – how to effectively get WP to interpret and proceed to access each is a bit of a vague mystery in the WP documents – it basically sets it up to execute a query, but fails to elaborate on how to implement those attributes, at least from my perspective.
. I’m not sure if my description of the conundrum I’m identifying is really coming across correctly.

I hope this clarifies my position and situation. Thank you for your input and assistance.

Does anyone understand what I’m attempting to explain?

I’ve got an idea.

Could someone do me a great favor and upload Kafkaesquí’s Get Author Profile Plugin to an FTP for me? I’m fighting filtration issues and the network won’t allow me to pick it up from his website.

I was thinking of a better way to explain this yesterday and I think maybe I’ve got it.

Still haven’t gotten the effect I want, but I’m still playing with WP and it’s hierarchy. If I do a the_author_posts_link() the hierarchy will look for the author.php – this much I’ve long understood. I’ve long since setup author.php to showcase ONE author’s information/description. This harken’s back to https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/66559?replies=24 and the explanation given there as well.

The issue I have is how do I tell the_author_posts_link() to select author.php on a per author basis – meaning, when the link selection is made and author.php is called, being that I have multiple authors how do I make it personalized to a specific author (i.e. when I click the link for george I need it to bring up george’s profile and not a list or one page of everyone’s profile – then when I select john’s I need it to bring up john’s information).

If I am correct, and it is my belief I am, I can’t have 10 author.php files because the then the the_author_posts_link() call couldn’t distinguish between them and would automatically pick the first in sequence or the directory wouldn’t support multiples of the same file or I probably would generate a parse error anyways of some sort.

Am I expected to devise and write an array to hold this information and somehow have the call handled by the array to determine which author’s information should appear? Or is a much simpler explanation I am absolutely blinded too?

Thank everyone once again for the consideration of my most evident confusion and any assistance you might be able to offer.

Reading further into author.php, I wonder – does the template tags in author.php pull directly from the profile information entered by the author upon creation of the account in the backend of WordPress?

If so, I may have has just solved my own problem as obviously that data somehow is capable of being called from those entries and my building of an array to handle the author’s data would be truly redundant.

For those that might also have a similar problem and not understand what I am identifying let me try and break down my theory further – When you execute the call the_author_posts_link() and it transparently selects through the template hierarchy ( https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Hierarchy ), if you’ve created the author.php page it will come to rest there. In turn, the author.php page will handle a series of template tags of your choosing whenever you build the page (i.e. the_author_description() ). I believe what most of us get hung-up on regarding multiple authors in one blog, is how is the call determining which author to bring up and where is this information being stored? If my theory is correct, the answer is so quite simple – the the_author_description() used the the_author_posts_link() author selection when the mouse was clicked as passthrough information to call the information from the WP backend user profile information managed/created in “Users >> Authors & users” and specifically the information found in the profile that you’ve entered for any given author.

If someone could please confirm this is correct, I would greatly appreciate it. If this is true, then the hierarchy of WP is so much more simple than I initially believed.

Excellent, I applied what I theorized and it has taken well. I pulled index.php and copied it, renaming it author.php. I then proceeded to edit the appropriate tags and remove some non-applicable information.

I then wrote the following author template tag, including it into author.php:
<?php the_author_description() ?>

This tag, for those of you that might be trying to read this issue that might be similar to yours as well and understand, allows you to pull the information entered into the author’s profile in your WP administration area – it should be labeled “about” or something similar.

One last question to anyone that might be able to explain. That field does not like to take xhtml tags. How do I format certain areas of the text, what will it allow for passthrough?

I believe this post answers your last question.