What’s Your Most Obscure WordPress Knowledge?

One response to “What’s your most obscure WordPress knowledge?”

1. Certainly! The ability to change the author of a WordPress page can be a bit obscure because, by default, WordPress primarily associates author management with posts rather than pages. However, it is possible to grant certain capabilities to specific user roles, allowing them to change the authors of pages as well. Here’s a detailed explanation of how to set this up, along with additional context:

   Understanding Roles and Capabilities in WordPress

   WordPress uses a system of roles and capabilities to control what users can and cannot do. Each user role (such as Subscriber, Contributor, Author, Editor, and Administrator) comes with its own set of capabilities by default. However, WordPress is highly customizable, and these capabilities can be modified to suit your needs.

   The author Role and Pages

   By default, the author role can create and manage their own posts but not pages. However, you can extend this role’s capabilities to allow them to change the author of a page. To facilitate author switching on pages, you can grant the level_1 capability to those roles. This is a lesser-known trick but can be quite useful.

   Implementing Author Switching for Pages

   Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can allow author switching for pages:

   1. Modify User Capabilities:
      You can use a plugin like “User Role Editor” or write a custom function to alter user capabilities. Here, I’ll demonstrate how to add the level_1 capability using custom code in a plugin or a theme’s functions.php file.

   2. Adding the Code:
      Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or create a custom plugin for cleaner management.

   “`php
   function add_custom_capability_to_author() {
   // Get the role object.
   $role = get_role( ‘author’ );

      // Check if the role exists and add capability.
      if ( $role ) {
          $role->add_cap( 'level_1' );
      }
   

   }
   add_action( ‘init’, ‘add_custom_capability_to_author’ );
   “`

   1. Check for the Capability:
      After adding the capability, authors should now be able to change the authors of pages. To do this from the edit or quick edit screens:
   2. Go to Pages > All Pages in the WordPress dashboard.
   3. Select a page and click **Edit

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