Make Author Archive Page URL be a Subdirectory of a Custom Post Type URL

Question

I have a custom post type with a custom URL structure so it works like:

http://domain.com/custom-post-type/post1
http://domain.com/custom-post-type/post2
http://domain.com/custom-post-type/post3
etc.

Now I have multiple authors of these posts, so I want to enable an "Author Archive" for only these custom post types at urls like this:

http://domain.com/custom-post-type/authorname1
http://domain.com/custom-post-type/authorname2
http://domain.com/custom-post-type/authorname3

Is this possible? Any ideas?

Thanks!

UPDATE: @Milo points out (I believe correctly) that "WordPress wouldn't be able to discern what is a post title and what is an author name," so given that, how would I get URLs like http://domain.com/custom-post-type/author/authorname1 ? Thanks!

Answer 1

Change custom-post-type in the following to the name of your CPT, both the slug and post_type= in the query vars. Visit your Permalinks Settings page to flush rewrite rules. You could also put this in a plugin and flush rules on plugin activation.

function wpa83047_author_rewrite_rule(){
    add_rewrite_rule(
        '^custom-post-type/author/([^/]+)/?$',
        'index.php?author_name=$matches[1]&post_type=custom-post-type',
        'top'
    );
}
add_action( 'init', 'wpa83047_author_rewrite_rule' );