Eric

I ended up going with the Co-Authors Plus plugin. It still was a bit challenging, but this plugin achieved all that I needed to: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/co-authors-plus/

Through trial and error, I discovered the foreach loop was not needed on author.php archive page. A little more streamlined than my last comment.

$this_author_display_name = get_the_author();
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_title' ) ){
	// account authors
	$this_author_title = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_title' );
} elseif( get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_title', true ) ){
	// CAP guest author
	$this_author_title = get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_title', true );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'email' ) ){
	$this_author_email = get_the_author_meta( 'email' );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_phone_number' ) ){
	// account authors
	$this_author_phone_number = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_phone_number' );
} elseif( get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_phone_number', true ) ){
	// CAP guest authors
	$this_author_phone_number = get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_phone_number', true );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_linkedin' ) ){
	// account authors
	$this_author_linkedin = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_linkedin' );
} elseif( get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_linkedin', true ) ){
	// CAP guest authors
	$this_author_linkedin = get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_linkedin', true );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_twitter' ) ){
	// account authors
	$this_author_twitter = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_twitter' );
} elseif( get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_twitter', true ) ){
	// CAP guest authors
	$this_author_twitter = get_post_meta( $authorID, 'guest_author_twitter', true );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'description' ) ){
	$this_author_description = get_the_author_meta( 'description' );
}

P.S. This is what I ended up doing to the time being. It feels dirty. Is there a better way?

// If there's a cleaner way to do this, I haven't found out how. The author data seems to be accessed differently for account-holding authors and non-account co-authors (created by co-authors plus plugin) when using custom fields (created by Advanced Custom Fields).

// Default all author values to null
$this_author_display_name = $this_author_title = $this_author_email = $this_author_phone_number = $this_author_linkedin = $this_author_twitter = $this_author_biography = null;

// Co-Authors (non custom fields also return for account-holding authors)
$coauthors = get_coauthors();
foreach( $coauthors as $coauthor ){
	$this_author_display_name = get_the_author();
	if( get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_title', true ) ){
		$this_author_title = get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_title', true );
	}
	if( $coauthor->user_email ){
		$this_author_email = $coauthor->user_email;
	}
	if( get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_phone_number', true ) ){
		$this_author_phone_number = get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_phone_number', true );
	}
	if( get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_linkedin', true ) ){
		$this_author_linkedin = get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_linkedin', true );
	}
	if( get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_twitter', true ) ){
		$this_author_twitter = get_post_meta( $coauthor->ID, 'guest_author_twitter', true );
	}
	if( $coauthor->description ){
		$this_author_biography = $coauthor->description;
	}

}

// Account Holding Authors (custom fields)
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_title' ) ){
	$this_author_title = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_title' );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_phone_number' ) ){
	$this_author_phone_number = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_phone_number' );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_linkedin' ) ){
	$this_author_linkedin = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_linkedin' );
}
if( get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_twitter' ) ){
	$this_author_twitter = get_the_author_meta( 'guest_author_twitter' );
}

P.S. What I’m trying to do is create a custom author.php page that displays the same info for post authors (account holders) as co-authors (non-account holders).

Thanks again!

This is not working for me.

On my author.php using Jeremy’s example above, I get the following results:

$coauthors = get_coauthors();
foreach( $coauthors as $coauthor ){
	$userdata = get_userdata( $coauthor->ID );
	var_dump( $userdata ); //returns bool(false)
	if ( $userdata->display_name ) { //returns "Notice: Trying to get property of non-object"
		echo '<h2>' . $userdata->display_name . '</h2>';
	}
}

Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

UPDATE

I’m kinda getting there. So far I’ve managed to write a custom author posts link if a guest author exists.

The resulting URL for a post author and guest author now have matching formats …

post author ex: https://www.example.com/author/john-doe guest author ex: https://www.example.com/author/jane-doe

Now I just need to figure out how to hijack the author archive page to display posts from the post author OR the guest author.

FUNCTIONS.PHP CODE:

add_filter( 'the_author_posts_link', 'custom_author_posts_link' );

function custom_author_posts_link($url) {

global $post;

$post_object = get_field('post_author');

if ( $post_object ) {

// GUEST AUTHOR EXISTS - override post object to grab relevant guest author info
global $post;
$post = $post_object;
setup_postdata( $post );

$guest_author_slug = $post->post_name;
$guest_author_name = get_field('team_member_name');
$guest_author_posts_link = site_url() . '/author/' .  $guest_author_slug;

$guest_url = sprintf(
    '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="author">%3$s</a>',
    esc_url( $guest_author_posts_link ),
    esc_attr( sprintf( __( 'Posts by %s' ), $guest_author_name ) ),
    $guest_author_name
);

$guest_url = $link; 

wp_reset_postdata(); // We're done here. Return to main $post object

}

return $url;

}

I discovered my error wasn’t in the loop itself, but in how I was calling the function. Here’s how I correctly called the function:

<?php
$upcoming_events = the_merged_presentation_events(true);
if( $upcoming_events !== false ){
	echo '<h3>Upcoming Presentations</h3>';
	echo $upcoming_events;
}
>

These two examples are more accurate to my situation:

WORKS: https://www.mydomain.com/parentpage/
404 PAGE: https://www.mydomain.com/parentpage/childpage/index.php

WORKS: https://www.mydomain.com/category/slug/
404 PAGE: https://www.mydomain.com/category/slug/index.php