How do I change the author name on my blog?

[Jemma_Nimick]

I am wanting to add a new blog author or guest author without making them an administrator of the site? Is that possible?

[Trevor]

Hey, Jemma. 

Only the names of the account owner and staff members will appear in the author section I'm afraid. This means it wouldn't be possible to add another author without first creating an account on their behalf. I tested my account to see if adding then deleting a staff member would allow the name to still appear, however, the system reverted the name to the next available author. 

That all said, I know that this is a wanted featured that many other merchants have requested. With that, I've added your vote on to this existing request to show our developers that there is further interest in getting this added in the future. 

If there's anything else I can help with please don't hesitate to reply back and I'll happily help out!

[HoneyandNature]

Aren't you allow to make a blog post anonymous or under the Company's name? I don't want to use my personal name.

[Trevor]

Hey, @HoneyandNature!

Blog authors can only be listed under the name of one of the staff accounts. If your desired outcome is to have the company name appear as the author name, then you could consider changing the name of your login credentials to your business name. Changing the name of your account can be done in Settings/Account by clicking your name, then updating the respected fields. 

If your desired outcome is to leave it anonymous, then your best bet would be to edit the coding of your theme. Going this route will allow you to manually remove the blog author name from appearing on blog pages. If you're using a Shopify free theme, and have an eligible account, then this may be something our theme support can help with!

Let me know your thoughts!

[unicorn_global]

You can do this now! https://apps.shopify.com/change-author

[Dance_Fashion]

Wait...is there a way to do this without the app? 

[Trevor]

@Dance_Fashion 

I'm afraid not. The steps I've outlined above would be the best workaround to changing the author name/hiding the author. That said, I dug the feature request for this specific case to see where it stands. Our teams are considering getting this added to the platform; however; I can't provide a specific timeline for when or if this will become available. In the event that we do get this launched, we'll update our Changelog to make everyone aware. 

[CarolBiovida]

Peter, I really need this functionality too. Paying for an app monthly seems ridiculous. This cuts us off from cross-marketing opportunities with other blogs.

[MDD]

@CarolBiovida Shopify does not care.  They intentionally leave out TONS of basic functionality so that they can create a marketplace based on manufactured demand where functionality you need can be sold back to you as an "app" with a monthly fee, which is provided by a third party and which I promise you Shopify gets a cut of the monthly income from.  The way they do this kind of thing is so scammy and dishonest, it's always the first thing I mention when people ask me how I like Shopify.

[sgriddle]

Can you please add another vote for this feature request ! 

[alejandropet]

Extremely necessary feature

[DaveD]

What had happened with the request from 2.5 years ago? Already resolved?

[murphystout]

Shopify continues to be a joke.  Just let people set a different author name for christ sake, it's incredibly basic and has 0 affect on anything.  What if we have a guest author on our blog? It's just straight up impossible to do that?  Does this software want people to host vibrant useful websites or do they want to push people to a real blogging platform like wordpress? Unbelievable!

[Luckypetey]

If you feel this way the most effective way to change this is to post on
Reddit. Shopify wants to keep complaints private. Public complaint on
Reddit go out to google and prevent other people from signing up.

[MetDark]

https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-Design/How-do-I-change-the-author-name-on-my-blog/td-p/92139
☝️

Alternately you can simply hard code this value in the article.liquid template and the blog.liquid template. The current value will be {{ article.author }}

HTH!

[MDD]

Almost certainly not.  Remember that despite the fact that you PAY for Shopifies services they intentionally leave functionality out of their platform so that they can set up an artificial marketplace for vendors (who of course pay Shopify a percentage of income) to resell basic functionality to you as "apps".  

It's a borderline scam IMO and is one of the reasons I've often considered dumping shopify.

[LunchBoX]

What are the alternatives.

I'm ready to dump Shopify now.  All the features I need are either behind a paywall or not available...very scammy and with zero to no support.

[unicorn_global]

We developed an app to help you with that: https://apps.shopify.com/change-author

[MDD]

We developed an app to help you with that: https://apps.shopify.com/change-author

A perfect example of what I'm talking about.  Shopify should have this functionality built in.  The fact that someone can try to charge me $7.99/mo to do something I want to do shows me that this kind of thing CAN be done, which means that Shopify is intentionally NOT doing it so that they can create a marketplace for apps that they are certainly getting a cut from.  

To me, this is basically a scam.  So no, I don't want your app.  And frankly I'm not sure I really want Shopify any longer.

[Snaphaan]

Not a chance. For something as simple as this you want $8!!

I am starting to agree with MDD's post on top. Shopify's marketplace is "based on manufactured demand where functionality you need can be sold back to you as an app".

The way they push this feels like it's a scam.

[scottty64]

Of course you have, $8 a month you can stick the app

[MetDark]

Did you try the solutions in my previous post?
You don't have to install any app

---

@LunchBoX wrote:

What are the alternatives.

I'm ready to dump Shopify now.  All the features I need are either behind a paywall or not available...very scammy and with zero to no support.

---

[scottty64]

wow 6 years since this question and still not implemented talk about slowwwww

[MDD]

They're not slow... they're not going to do it at all.  Shopify has figured out a way to charge you, the end user, for their services while also not providing you with a full suite of tools to employ those services.  Instead, they intentionally leave out basic functionalities so that they can create a manufactured marketplace for those functionalities called the Shopify App Store.  In this store, independent developers create solutions to Shopify platform shortcomings (proving that those problems CAN BE FIXED) and then sell them to you as "apps" with a monthly fee.  I 100% guarantee you that Shopify gets a cut of that fee.  

Shopify intentionally creates problems with their platform so that they can make money selling you the "fixes".  This is a borderline scam, and they DO NOT CARE.

[Luckypetey]

this is completely ridiculous. guest posting is common. Shopify needs to get with the times and update this rule which exists for no reason

[MDD]

They're never going to "get with the times" because that would mean shutting down their scam marketplace for "apps" and instead including basic functionality that you ALREADY PAY FOR in their service.  Instead, they intentionally leave it out so that you have to use their rip-off "app store".

[unicorn_global]

Yes it's possible! https://apps.shopify.com/change-author

[AmbayaGold]

For $8 a month, you can change a text value to reflect the appropriate author!! This is just a sad abuse of a simple Shopify limitation. How do they sleep at night? This should be a $5 ONE TIME fee to offer this simple code change in. Robbery! 

[pokupoku]

It is genuinely insane to me someone thinks its reasonable to pay $8 **PER MONTH** for such a simple change. This is something that should take a programmer at Shopify 30 minutes to fix. Ridiculous.

[MonsteraEtc]

I'm just encountering this problem in August of 2023 and shocked to see it's apparently still an issue when the first post is from 2018. I too thought the app was going to be a (over-engineered) solution, but for a subscription??? No way.

[MDD]

It's not "an issue", it's just one of many many things shopify intentionally leaves out of their platform so they can resell it to you as an "app".  It's part of their scam platform.

[MDD]

Yes it is possible, but only if you PAY someone a monthly fee for it.  Shove it.

[CoolBaby]

The easiest way to change name of author/your personal name not to be seen, is to change the name of your account - from your personal name to maybe company name/nick....

On the main page in shopify click on your name in the top right corner, click on manage account and just change your first and last name.

Negative side of this solution is that you can only have 1 author, cause every time you change the name it will automatically change the name of author on all your previous blogs.  

But for me this solution did the job well 🙂

[marylabs]

If that author is not supposed to upload any content to your blog, but you want to create an author with a photo and bio to just add to posts, you can use this guide: https://magefan.com/shopify/apps/blog/new-author.

Let me know if it helps.

[julianhz]

Just to update. I just posted my blog. Yes, the page didn't contain the author's name and it didn't cost anything at all. All you need to do is to publish it. Go to the menu (Sales Channel) on the right of the Shopify page to customize the page. Then, you go to the blog, click your blog page, and click your paragraph (where you can customize the image in the blog, padding, etc.) Scroll down the menu, there's a selection that you can check or uncheck "show date" and "show author". Uncheck the "show author" box and there you go 😉 No need to spend extra dollars on this function.

[siguy85]

Even with this unticked, if you view the page source of the blog your name will be on the page as the author in the structured content.

You can change this by editing the code of the main-article.liquid file. Look for this towards the bottom half of the page and hard code "Admin" or something.