Problems identified with existing multi-author and guest author plugins

[johnbillion]

These issues apply to PublishPress Authors, but mostly affect Co-Authors Plus too.

• Unnecessary distinction between guest authors and regular users, complicates things like queries and logic, unfamiliar UI and UX, data duplication
• Inconsistent distinction between editorial author and attributed author depending on whether the post is attributed only to guest author(s) or also to real WP user(s)
• No REST API or WP-CLI support for CRUD, both for guest authors and the connection for an author with a post
• No means of syncing guest author data between sites on a Multisite network
• User capability management isn't very granular and doesn't match core by default
• Poor UI on post editing screen, uses an old meta box cramped at the bottom of the screen
• Too much PublishPress branding, why are its admin screens purple?
• A user needs to create a guest author on another admin screen before it can be used - no way to create one on the fly from the post editing screen
• Any other user has to be added as an "Author" before they can be attributed on a post, although there is an option to automatically do this for selected roles
• Duplication of user profile management - if I install a plugin to manage avatars then managing the profile for a guest author is handled differently to that of a regular user
• When a user is connected to an "Author" all their user fields are duplicated into term meta, but they are not kept up to date when either the user or the term meta is changed
• If I want to "upgrade" a guest author to an actual user then I have to create the user, then edit the guest author and select their user account, but their data is not synced properly
• When querying a guest author archive the queried object becomes a term instead of a user, it's inconsistent as an author archive for a real user is a user object
• Uses \MultipleAuthors\Classes\Objects\Author as a "fake" user object that's compatible with WP_User
• Multiple "Authors" can be associated with the same user and then author archives break completely

[tomjn]

Don't forget duplicate UI's in the block editor, publishpress has both its authors metabox from PHP and a taxonomy authors panel that core provides. Nor does it provide a mechanism for renaming authors to another term that fits the CPT better

[johnbillion]

Do you mean renaming the taxonomy label? That's very interesting. Authorship will place the authors control in the same place it is in WordPress by default, so it will only have a form label that will use one of the taxonomy labels and say something like "Attribution:". Maybe we should make this text filterable.

[svandragt]

Have you thought about how authorship will deal with group attribution, for example departments? The policy and best practice is to avoid group accounts (no shared logins), so perhaps they should be WP Users without the ability to login?

[johnbillion]

Yes a group account such as we've seen on SW can be implemented via a guest account, and users with a role of guest will not be able to log in. This is going to be blocked at the authentication layer. If, at a later date, someone does want to log in with that account then it can be promoted to another role.