How to Hide the Author in WordPress and Disable Author Pages

You can hide the author in WordPress by deleting the author blocks in the Site Editor or by hiding the byline with CSS. A block theme needs about five minutes of work in the Site Editor, and a classic theme needs one short CSS rule.

We tested every method in this guide in October 2026 on a WordPress 7.1.3 test site. The themes were Twenty Twenty-Five and Twenty Twenty-One, and the SEO plugins were Rank Math 1.0.280 and Yoast SEO 28.7. The tests showed that a hidden byline still leaves the name in the author page, the feed, the schema markup, and the users API.

You will learn how to hide the byline on block and classic themes, show a team name instead, and disable or noindex author archives. We also list what each fix leaves behind, how to bring the author name back, and when hiding the author is a bad idea.

How to Hide the Author in WordPress: Which Method Fits Your Theme?

To hide the author in WordPress, first find out whether your theme is a block theme or a classic theme. Block themes have an Editor item under Appearance and use the Site Editor. Classic themes show Customize and Theme File Editor instead, and they need CSS or a short code snippet.

We used Twenty Twenty-Five as the block theme and Twenty Twenty-One as the classic theme. Your own theme names its elements differently, so treat the class names below as examples that you adapt.

Start with the byline. Then deal with the author archive and the other places that keep the name, because a hidden byline does not remove them.

Method 1: Hide the Author on a Block Theme

Block themes build each post from blocks, so you remove the author by deleting its block. In Twenty Twenty-Five the whole change takes five steps in the Site Editor and one click on Save. The same steps remove the author name from WordPress posts everywhere that template is used.

Follow these steps in the Site Editor:

1. Open the Single Posts template: Go to Appearance, then Editor, then Templates, and click the Single Posts card.
   
2. Detach the Written by pattern: Open List View, select the Written by block, open its Options menu, and choose Detach. Confirm with the Detach button, because the author line in Twenty Twenty-Five is a block pattern.
   
3. Delete the Author Name block: Click Author Name in List View and delete it from the Options menu. Then delete the two text paragraphs around it, so the line no longer reads “Written by in”.
   
4. Save the template: Click Save in the top bar. WordPress shows “Template updated” when the change is stored.
   
5. Check a post: Open any post while you are logged out. The author line is gone and only the category stays.
   

In our test, the Author Name block would not delete until we detached the pattern. Other templates such as Blog Home and Archives can carry their own author blocks. Open each one and look through List View for an Author Name block.

Note: If your theme also shows a Date block next to the author, select it in List View and delete it the same way. That is how you remove the author and date from WordPress posts together.

Method 2: Hide the Author on a Classic Theme With CSS

Classic themes print the byline from PHP templates, so the quickest fix is a CSS rule that hides the byline element. Open Appearance, then Customize, then Additional CSS, and paste the rule into the box. The change is reversible, and it never touches your theme files.

You need the name of the element that holds the byline. Every theme uses its own class names, which is why copied rules from other tutorials often do nothing.

1. Find the byline class: Open a post, right-click the author name, and choose Inspect. In Twenty Twenty-One the byline is a span with the class byline, inside a div with the class posted-by.
   
2. Open Additional CSS: Go to Appearance, then Customize, and click Additional CSS.
3. Paste the rule: Add the CSS shown below, and the preview updates at once.
   
4. Publish: Click Publish to put the rule on the live site.

This is the markup we found in Twenty Twenty-One, trimmed to the relevant lines:

<div class="posted-by">
	<span class="posted-on">Published <time>October 13, 2026</time></span>
	<span class="byline">By <a href="/author/sample-author/" rel="author">Sample Author</a></span>
</div>

Our first attempt used .byline { display: none; } and it did nothing on single posts. Twenty Twenty-One sets .single .site-main > article > .entry-footer .byline to display: block, and that longer selector wins. Adding !important fixes it:

.byline {
	display: none !important;
}

To hide the date as well, add the date class to the same rule. We checked in the browser that this hides both lines and leaves the category link visible.

.posted-on,
.byline {
	display: none !important;
}

CSS only hides the text. The name stays in the page source, which the leaks section below covers.

Method 3: Hide the Author With a PHP Snippet

A PHP snippet prints the same CSS from a snippets plugin or a child theme. That keeps the rule in one place that does not depend on the active theme, and it lets you limit the rule to blog posts. We used the free Code Snippets plugin, version 4.0.0.

Editing the functions.php file of your live theme is risky, because one typo can take the site down and a theme update erases your code. If you prefer files, use a child theme instead.

1. Add a snippet: Go to Snippets, then Add New, and type a clear title such as “Hide the author byline”.
2. Paste the code: The code below prints the rule in the page head, but only on single blog posts.
3. Set the location: Choose “Only run on site front-end” so the code never runs in the admin area. Then click Save and Activate.
   

add_action( 'wp_head', function () {
	if ( ! is_singular( 'post' ) ) {
		return;
	}
	echo '<style>.byline { display: none !important; }</style>';
} );

After we activated it, the byline span still existed in the HTML, but its computed display was none. Pages and archives were untouched, because the check stops the code anywhere except a single post.

Method 4: Show a Team Name Instead of Your Name

Changing the display name hides a person without hiding the byline. The byline then shows a team name, and the same name appears in the feed and the schema markup. You set it on your profile screen in two quick saves.

1. Set a nickname: Go to Users, then Profile, type the team name in the Nickname field, and click Update Profile.
2. Pick the display name: Open the Display name publicly as list, choose the team name, and update the profile again.
   
3. Check a post: The byline now shows the team name instead of the person.
   

In our test, the page source no longer contained the old name at all. The RSS feed and the schema author field showed the team name too. One thing did not change: the author URL still used the old slug, /author/sample-author/, because the display name and the slug are separate values.

If a post carries the wrong person, change the author of the post instead of renaming a user.

How to Disable Author Archives in WordPress

WordPress gives each author an archive page at /author/username/ that lists their posts. You can disable author archives, so the URL redirects or returns a 404. Disabling is the cleaner fix when you hide authors on purpose, and noindex is the fallback for pages you keep.

Hiding the byline does not touch these pages. A reader who knows the URL pattern can still open the WordPress author page, and it still prints the author name in the page title.

Rank Math: Disable or Noindex Author Archives

Rank Math keeps both options in one place, which you open from Rank Math SEO, then Titles & Meta, then Authors. The screen text comes from the plugin’s Titles & Meta settings. On our test site the Author Archives setting started as Enabled.

1. Open the Authors tab: Go to Rank Math SEO, then Titles & Meta, and click Authors.
2. Disable the archives: Switch Author Archives to Disabled and click Save Changes.
   

Rank Math says that when you disable the archives, they are redirected to your homepage. In our test the author URL answered with a 301 redirect to the homepage.

To keep the archive and hide it from search, leave Author Archives on Enabled and check the robots settings below it. On our fresh install the Author Robots Meta switch was already on with No Index ticked.

The archive page on that install carried a robots meta tag of “follow, noindex”. Rank Math’s own setting text advises noindex for author archives that you keep.

The robots tag in this case is a page-level instruction. If a page is noindexed by mistake, our guide to removing the noindex tag in WordPress shows how to find the cause.

To learn more about the other tags in the page head, see our guide to adding meta tags in WordPress.

Yoast SEO: Advanced Settings and Author Archives

Yoast SEO puts the same choices under Settings, then Advanced, then Author archives, as the Yoast help page describes. There are two switches that matter, one for the page itself and one for search results. We tested both on Yoast SEO 28.7.

1. Open the screen: Go to Yoast SEO, then Settings, open Advanced, and click Author archives.
2. Disable the page: Switch off Enable author archives and save. Yoast says this redirects the archive to your homepage, and in our test the author URL answered with a 301 redirect.
   
3. Or keep it out of search: Switch off Show author archives in search results instead. The archive then carried a robots tag of “noindex, follow”, and the author sitemap disappeared from our sitemap index.
   

Before the change, the sitemap index on our Yoast site listed an author sitemap next to the post and category sitemaps. Rank Math’s default sitemap on our other test site had no author sitemap.

WordPress Code Without an SEO Plugin

Without an SEO plugin, a short snippet can return a 404 for every author page. The template_redirect action fires just before WordPress picks a template, so it can mark the request as not found. Add it as a second snippet with the same front-end location.

add_action( 'template_redirect', function () {
	if ( is_author() ) {
		global $wp_query;
		$wp_query->set_404();
		status_header( 404 );
		nocache_headers();
	}
} );

On our test site the author URL returned HTTP 404 after we activated it, and the theme showed its normal not-found page. A 404 means the page is gone, and a 301 redirect to the homepage means it moved. Pick one and keep it.

What Hiding the Author Does Not Hide

Hiding the byline changes what visitors see on the page, but the author name still lives in other places. After every byline fix we tested, the name stayed in the RSS feed, the schema markup, and the users REST endpoint. The table shows each fix and what it leaves behind.

• Page source: A CSS rule only hides the byline, so the name stays in the HTML that search engines and scrapers read.
• RSS feed: Every item in our feed still carried the author name in the dc:creator field after the byline was gone.
• Schema markup: Both Rank Math and Yoast printed the author name inside the Article schema on our test posts.
• Users API: A visitor who is not logged in could open the /wp-json/wp/v2/users path and read the name and the slug.

You can run the same checks on your own site in a few minutes. Open your feed at /feed/ and search it for the author name. Open /wp-json/wp/v2/users in a private window and see whether it lists names.

Then view the source of a post and search for the name. Each hit is a place that still shows it.

The users API is the one you can close with code. The rest_endpoints filter lets you remove routes, and this snippet removes the two user routes for visitors who are not logged in:

add_filter( 'rest_endpoints', function ( $endpoints ) {
	if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
		unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users'] );
		unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users/(?P<id>[\d]+)'] );
	}
	return $endpoints;
} );

As a visitor on our test site, the users path then answered with a “rest_no_route” 404, while the posts endpoint kept working. A plugin or app that reads the users path while logged out will stop working, so test your forms and integrations after you add it. It is one small item on a bigger hardening list, so see our WordPress security checklist for the rest.

How to Show the Author Name in a WordPress Post

To show the author name in a WordPress post on a block theme, add the Author Name block to the Single Posts template. On a classic theme, delete the CSS rule or deactivate the snippet that hides it. Most classic themes print a byline on their own.

1. Open the template: Go to Appearance, then Editor, then Templates, and open Single Posts.
2. Insert the block: Click the plus button, search for Author Name, and click the block. It lands next to the block you selected, so pick the spot first.
   
3. Save: Click Save, then open a post to check the result.

If your classic theme never printed an author line, it has no setting for one. Check the theme’s own options first, and then add the line through a child theme template if you need it.

Our separate guide shows how to hide the featured image in a WordPress post if you want that gone too.

Should You Hide the Author at All?

Hiding the author is fine for a company blog, a privacy-sensitive topic, or a site with a team voice. It also removes a trust signal that readers and search engines look at. Google’s helpful content guidance says “We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information”.

The same page warns against deceptive authorship information, including made-up names. So never swap a real writer for an invented person. A team name or a company name is honest, and a fake persona is not.

If you write about health, money, or advice, keep a real byline and link it to a clear author page. Readers weigh who wrote that kind of page.

For a news-style blog or a product blog, a team byline plus a good About page works well. Use the real company name, link it to your About page, and keep the same name in the byline, the feed, and the schema markup.

Conclusion

You can hide the author in WordPress in minutes, but do it in three passes. First hide the byline with the Site Editor, CSS, or a snippet. Then disable author archives or set them to noindex in Rank Math or Yoast SEO.

Last, decide how much else you want to close. The feed, the schema markup, and the users API still carry the name unless you change the display name or block them. Test the result as a logged-out visitor before you call it done.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)