Justin Tadlock

X3P0: Authors is a block that lets you display a simple list of post authors for your site. This is especially useful if you’re coming over from using a classic WordPress theme and need a block that’s similar to the old <code>wp_list_authors()</code> template tag.
Aside from the full array of normal block design tools, the block lets you choose from several options:
<ul>
<li>Number: Decide the number of authors to list.</li>
<li>Order By: Choose from a variety of fields to order the list by.</li>
<li>Order: Whether to display the list in ascending or descending order.</li>
<li>Has Published Posts: Whether to only show authors who have published posts.</li>
<li>Show Feed Link: Whether to show an icon linked to the author’s RSS feed.</li>
<li>Show Post Count: Whether to display the author’s published post count.</li>
</ul>
You can find the full source code for this plugin via its <a href="https://github.com/x3p0-dev/x3p0-authors" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub repository</a>.

X3P0: Authors

A customizable authors list block that lets you showcase post authors, their feed links, and post counts.

danielpataki

Top authors allows yoy to list your top authors with plenty of options. You can set the following in each widget:
<ul>
<li>Widget title</li>
<li>Roles to exclude</li>
<li>Post types to include</li>
<li>Authors to show</li>
<li>4 Preset display templates</li>
<li>Custom display template that allows you to create a completely custom structure and modify the output before and after the list.</li>
<li>Archive (category/tag/taxonomy) specific author lists</li>
</ul>
For a more detailed description of how you can set up custom author lists take a look at the other notes section. The plugin also has some developer friendly features, take a look at the other notes section for more.
<h4>Thanks</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/sebvandijk" rel="nofollow ugc">Seb Van Dijk</a> for donating this plugin to me for free, I owe you one 🙂</li>
<li><a href="http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/" rel="nofollow ugc">Font Awesome</a> for the plugin icon</li>
</ul>
<h4>Usage</h4>
Most of the options for the plugin are self explanatory, I thought I’d highlight the archive specific authors and the display template.
If Archive specific authors is checked the plugin will handle authors differently on category, tag and taxonomy archive pages. It will narrow the posts down to only those in the given archive. Practically this means the following:
Say John wrote 10 posts on the website and Jill wrote 5. On normal pages John would be listed first, Jull would be listed second. However, John wrote 3 posts in the “Food” category while Jill wrote 4. On the archive page for the “Food” category – if Archive specific authors is checked – Jill will be shown first with 4 posts and John second with 3.
When you select “Custom Structure” as the preset display you should see three new fields: Display Template, Before List and After List. These fields can be used to control the HTML display of your authors. To make sure you can use the data retireved by the widget I’ve added placeholders which will be replaced by real data:
<ul>
<li>%posts_url%: The URL to the user’s post archive page</li>
<li>%website_url%: The URL to the user’s website</li>
<li>%gravatar_SIZE%: The gravatar of the user at the given size. For example, to display a 50px Gravatar your would use %gravatar_50%</li>
<li>%firstname%: The user’s first name</li>
<li>%lastname%: The user’s last name</li>
<li>%displayname%: The user’s display name</li>
<li>%username%: The user’s username</li>
<li>%post_count%: Number of posts</li>
<li>%meta_FIELD%: Displays the given meta field. If you store a user’s Twitter name in the ‘twitter’ meta field you could use %meta_twitter% to display it.</li>
</ul>
As of 1.0.9 there is also a custom ID field. This is for advanced use, mainly for developers. It allows for custom CSS stylings and even custom queries on a widget-to-widget basis.
<h4>For Developers</h4>
Currently there are three filters you can use to control the options available in the widget.
<ul>
<li><code>ta/usable_roles</code> allows you to change the roles that can be selected. It should return an array of roles in the form of slug=>name</li>
<li><code>ta/usable_opst_types</code> allows you to change the post_types that can be selected. It should return an array of post type objects</li>
<li><code>ta/post_query</code> allows you to modify the arguments of the WP_Query which retrieves the posts that we look up the authors for. Modify the arguments if you want to force category-specific top authors on single post pages, or other similar uses</li>
</ul>

Top Authors

One of the important options of this plugin for me is the 'visibility' option and i can't get it to work at all.



Love the idea but can't get the visibility option to work

A highly customizable widget that allows you to display the top authors of your website easily.

X3P0: Authors vs Top Authors