powtac

mzeecedric

kikuyumoja

This plugin prevents the 404 error on author pages when the author has no posts.
It is published under the GPL 2 licence (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt).
The original idea was taken from the the “List Authors” plugin here: http://guff.szub.net/source/custom-list-authors.php

Show authors without posts

Shows the authors page even if the author has no post.

mattdu

This plugin uses the custom taxonomy features of WordPress to create “bylines” — essentially, tags representing authors who contributed to a post. The differentiating feature of this plugin is that it should not require any modifications to your theme files (assuming it is already displaying the post author).
This plugin would be useful for publishing situations where the majority of your content is from contributors who you don’t necessarily want to have access to your back-end. It still conveys the appearance that the authors are members of the site (it provides a built-in archive page for each Byline). If your theme displays tag descriptions, you could use the Byline description field to identify guests vs. “staff” writers or provide other author information.
You can see an example of this plugin at work at http://thedailycougar.com

Byline

The Byline plugin is simple and suitable for multi-author WordPress sites.

Best For Multi Author

Solves the co/multi-author problem without modifying the theme. Uses a custom taxonomy, "Byline," that replaces the Display Author.

Show authors without posts vs Byline