how to assign content to a different author while loading content

Question

I am new to WordPress and am learning the platform on the fly. We are in the process of converting a large non-WordPress site to the WordPress platform. In the process, we have several people updating and loading content into the new site. As a result, all the content is being assigned to the individual loading the content.

My Question is Two-fold

1st] I am under the impression that I can reassign the content to the appropriate author through a mysql query/update script I write... Is this a correct Assumption?

2nd] Is there a way to add an "author" selection box to the post/page form where the content loader could simply select the correct author and then manipulate the parsing process so that WordPress recognizes the selected author and assigns the content to them instead of the loader?

Answer 1

Just to add to what MozBoz has already said, you can also set the author from the post / page in WP directly. You can usually do this from the editor itself, but there are a lot of page builders available, so I'd suggest going to WP Admin and to your All Posts, hover over the post you want to set the author of and select Quick Edit. This will pull down a tray of options, one of which will be an author dropdown where you can select the posts author from all of the users on your site.

Answer 2

1 - Yes. You could manually update the post_author field on wp_posts table if you wanted to, using SQL. Obviously you'd have to know a bit of SQL to be able to change just the posts you wanted to, and this field is the ID of the author.

2 - I just had a quick look and this plugin seems to do exactly what you want - it adds an 'author' dropdown to the post edit screen. You have to read up on the settings and configure its settings before it starts working, but looks like it does exactly what you want. I just tested with current Wordpress release version (5.4.2) and it works ok.