Author Name Block: Link to Author URL

[BrookeDot]

When you add the Author Name Block (core/post-author-name) to the post, the only option is to link to the author's archive. It would be nice to be able to link elsewhere, such as the author's website.

https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/post-author-name-block/

What problem does this address?

Customizing the Author Name Block to include the URL makes it more flexible. Otherwise, a custom block or the HTML_Tag_Processor must be used.

What is your proposed solution?

Update the "Link to Authors Archive" to show a dropdown of places it can be linked to.

Workaround:

Use WP_HTML_Tag_Processor

function add_author_url_to_name_block($block_content, $block)
{
    $author_id = $block['context']['postAuthor'] ?? get_post_field('post_author');

    if (! $author_id) {
        return $block_content;
    }

    $author_url = get_the_author_meta('user_url', $author_id);
    
    if (empty($author_url)) {
        return $block_content;
    }
    
    $processor = new WP_HTML_Tag_Processor($block_content);

    if ($processor->next_tag('a')) {
        return $block_content;
    }

    $processor = new WP_HTML_Tag_Processor($block_content);
    
    if ($processor->next_tag()) {
        $tag_name = $processor->get_tag();
        
        $existing_class = $processor->get_attribute('class');
        $attributes = $existing_class ? sprintf(' class="%s"', esc_attr($existing_class)) : '';

        preg_match('/<[^>]+>(.*?)<\/[^>]+>/s', $block_content, $matches);
        $inner_content = $matches[1] ?? $block_content;

        return sprintf(
            '<%1$s%2$s><a href="%3$s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="wp-block-post-author-name__link">%4$s</a></%1$s>',
            $tag_name,
            $attributes,
            esc_url($author_url),
            $inner_content
        );
    }

    return $block_content;
}

Related: #40157 (regarding editing the author's text)

[Mustafabharmal]

Yeah, I think it’s doable. We can provide an option for the user to choose which author URL should be used (e.g., the author’s website or the author archive page). I’ll work on this and raise a PR shortly.