3 ways to hide the author's name, date, and article data

WordPress website and blog managers sometimes need to hide the data of articles published on their websites or blogs from the visitor, such as the name of the article’s author, the date it was published, and its classification. On the other hand, the WordPress system does not provide this feature by default, but there are many ways that enable you to do this by adding some code, modifying the code, or changing some settings without using any additional components. In this article, we will highlight the reasons why we might want to hide various article data from the visitor, and explain the best ways in which this data can be hidden and re-shown.

Why might you need to hide post data in WordPress? In fact, there are many reasons why we might remove and hide WordPress article data from visitors and users, and these reasons range from weak to very strong, such as when we need to protect the author. These reasons vary depending on the information to be hidden from the article data. The reasons for the need to hide the name of the writer differ from the reasons for the need to hide the date or classification.

Because the site manager will certainly know when he needs to hide his site’s article data, we will mention here the most important reasons, but not all of them: Visually simplifying article pages to make them easier to read, as the presence of article data may be a little distracting for the reader. When more than one person collaborated on writing the article, you will need to remove the writer's name, as showing the name of one writer would not be fair. If the article discusses or contains controversial ideas, such as political articles that take sides, you will have to remove the name of the article's author to protect their reputation, work, or even themselves.

Ways to hide article data in WordPress The methods for removing article data that succeed in performing the task differ from one site to another depending on many criteria, including the template used and the plugins installed. A method may work on one site and not work on another, but we will explain to you here two proven methods that work on almost all WordPress templates using which various article data can be hidden from the visitor, in addition to a third, non-technical method that works on all websites, but it can only be used to remove the author’s name. 1. Manually hide article data using CSS Using CSS, you can easily hide the writer’s name, date, or any other article data, or all of its data, from site visitors, as you will only need to apply a few simple steps.

This method can be applied to almost all WordPress sites, but it does not completely hide the article data, as the data will still be present in the site code, but it will disappear from the front interface that appears to the visitor. To hide article data in WordPress using CSS, carefully follow the following illustrated steps: Open one of your site’s articles using the Google Chrome browser, then open the (Elements) tab in the browser’s developer tools by clicking on an empty place on the page using the right mouse button, then choose (Inspect) from the drop-down menu that appears and click on it, or instead of doing all of that, press the “F12” key or the “Ctrl + Shift + I” keys on the keyboard after opening One of the site's articles (the Elements tab will open in half of the screen, while the page will be minimized to occupy the other half). Click “Inspect” to open the “Elements” tab in the developer tools in the browser. From the “Elements” tab, find the HTML element code that includes the information you want to remove from the article data and its icon. If you want to hide the writer’s name, you will find the element code that contains the writer’s name and the writer’s icon. If you want to hide the classification, you will find the element code that includes the classification and the classification icon.

You can find the code of the element that you want to hide by passing the mouse cursor over the lines of code in the (Elements) tab. When you place the mouse cursor on one of the element codes in the tab, it will be completely shaded within the page, and therefore when the element you want is highlighted, you will know that the mouse cursor is on its code. The part of the code on which the mouse cursor stands is for the element that includes the writer’s name. Note: The process of finding the part of the code for the element that includes the writer’s name or any other article data does not differ depending on the WordPress template used, but the code for this element may differ greatly from one template to another, that is, the code for the element that contains your writer’s name may not be the same as what is within the red rectangle in the previous image, but the method for finding that code is the same as the method used in the previous step. The code that you will find at the beginning after the first word (which is usually span or div) will contain a statement of this form (class=ST), where the letters (ST) stand for any text phrase enclosed in quotation marks. The following image illustrates this idea.

An image showing the location of class=ST in the element's code. To hide the data of the article for which you found the element's code, all you have to do is use the value of the class (i.e. the text within the yellow shape in the previous image without the quotation marks) to assign the value (none) to the display property of this element by using the following CSS code: .ST { display:none; } Note: We place (ST) in the previous code the class value of the element we want to hide, or only part of it, from the beginning of the value until reaching the first space (which is better), after which the code is ready for use. In our example here, the code will be as follows: entry-meta-author author vcard { display:none; } Or as follows (use this format, it's better): .entry-meta-author { display:none; } After creating the appropriate code, you must enter it into your WordPress site. To do this, copy it, then go to the WordPress control panel, then place the mouse cursor on (Appearance), then click on (Customize) in order to go to the page for customizing your WordPress site.

Click on Customize to go to the site customization page. Within the site customization page, you will find a tab called “Additional CSS.” Click on its name to show it. Show the Additional CSS Formats tab. Now paste the code you copied into this tab, then click on the (Publish) button. Paste the code and then click the Publish button. Open any of the articles on your site, and you will notice that the name of the writer (or date or classification according to the element for which you created the code in the previous steps) has disappeared. Hiding the name of the writer from the article page It is worth noting that this method does not hide the author’s name or date (or other data) from the archive pages, nor does it hide articles from the authors’ article pages, but you can follow the same previous steps to hide data from the different archive pages, each one separately, or you can disable the appearance of authors’ pages in search results using the All in One SEO add-on, and thus no one will be able to access them unless they have their links.

Note: If you change the WordPress website template to a new template after hiding the author’s name, date, or any other article data, the changes will not remain in effect on the new template, and you will have to repeat all the previous steps to re-hide the article data. However, if you change the template to an old template that you had hidden the article data while using, there is no need to re-apply the steps, as the modifications you made to the article data in this way will be applied automatically. 2. Manually removing article data by modifying the code. This method for removing article data in WordPress is better than the previous method because it hides and removes article data from the page code, meaning that the element containing the article data will not be present within the page code, and will not appear to the visitor even if he reads the code. It also works on all WordPress templates, but its implementation is a little difficult and requires modifying the file codes of the WordPress template used.

Note: Make a backup copy of your website template files before starting to implement the steps of this method, as this will help you restore the template and return it to its original state in the event that errors occur during or after modifying its files. In order to remove WordPress post data by editing your template files, you will need to find and delete the code responsible for displaying the post data (or just one of them). It is easy to delete the code after finding it, but unfortunately it may be difficult to find sometimes, so here we will explain the best way to search for the article data code, but we cannot guarantee 100% that you will be able to find it with it.

Go to the support page for the template you are using if you are using a free template available in the WordPress theme store, then search for a post related to article data by entering the word (Metadat) or (Author) or any other related words in the search box, then pressing the “Enter” key, then try by reading the posts to find the article data code. Example: A website uses the MH Magazine lite template, and we want to remove and hide all article data for this website from the visitor. Although the first method works perfectly, we would like to remove data from the code of article pages as well, so we will use this method.

We went to the theme's support page on WordPress.org, entered “Metadata” into the search box, and the following results came up. Search results for metadata on the template's support page. We browsed the results and chose to click on the first result (add multiple author code to the template), because we logically expect that to add more than one author to the template's articles, we must know the author show code, which is one of the article data, and therefore when we know the author show code, we will also be able to know the other article data codes. One of the first search result posts was like this image.

A post that includes a reference to the location of the metadata code in the template files. This post included a direct reference to the location of the article data code (metadata) in the template files. It was mentioned that the function that processes article data is mh_magazine_lite_post_meta() and can be found in the mh-custom-functions.php file located in the (includes) folder. So we went to the aforementioned file by going to (Appearance), then (Template Editor), then to the file mh-custom-functions.php. We manually searched for the function mh_magazine_lite_post_meta(), and we found it there. The mh_magazine_lite_post_meta() function, which fetches and displays the article data. Now that we have found the article data code in the template files, we can delete it completely to remove and prevent all data from appearing to visitors, or we can delete parts of it to remove specific data, such as the name of the writer only, or the date of writing only, etc., and we can determine the part of the code responsible for each piece of data by reading it if we have a little experience in the PHP language, or by seeking the help of an expert in this language. The following image shows one of the site's articles before and after the article's data code was removed from the file and updated.

An image showing one of the articles before and after deleting the article data code in the template files. Important note: When deleting the article data code, we do not delete the job name, but only what is written in parentheses after it. In our example, the form of the code was as follows after deletion: The form of the code after deletion. If you are unable to locate the code by searching and browsing the posts in the support section for the WordPress template, ask in that section about the function responsible for fetching and showing article data and the location in which it is located, then after you are notified by the developer, delete it. If the WordPress template you are using is not available in the WordPress template store, ask the site from which you obtained it about the job and its location. If you cannot do that, you must seek the help of an expert to find it for you through one of the freelancing sites.

3. Hide the real writer’s name by using a pseudonym. This method can be used to prevent the real writer’s name from appearing on the pages of WordPress articles only. It cannot be used to hide other data, as it depends on using a pseudonym different from the name of the article’s real writer. If you want your name not to appear as the author of an article you write, you can write it after logging in through the pseudonym account, or you can write it from your account and then change the author of the article to the writer’s pseudonym. You can also change the author names of all articles currently on your site to an alias if you want, easily with a few clicks, but you cannot simply undo the changes, as you cannot easily return the author name of each article to what it was before changing it to the alias name, and you will have to change the author names of each group of articles that have the same author individually.

Here we will explain how to create a new writer with a pseudonym, and how to change the names of the authors of articles on the site to this writer. Create a new writer with a pseudonym To create a new writer on your WordPress site, follow these steps: In your WordPress site’s control panel, place the mouse cursor on (Members), then click on the (Add New) option from the drop-down menu that appears. Click on the Add New option in the Members list to add a new writer. Fill in the required fields on the page that appears as appropriate.

Use a fictitious username and an email address that is not linked to anyone, and put the first part of the pseudonym in the field next to (First Name), and the second part of the pseudonym in the field next to (Last Name), and set the member rank to (Editor), then click on the (Add New Member) button. Fill out the fields to create a new writer in WordPress. Now click on the (Edit) button that appears when you place the mouse cursor on the new writer that you created, as the following image shows. To change the settings of the new author account created, change the settings as you wish, and do not forget to choose an appropriate option from the menu next to (Display name publicly as).

Determine the way the name is displayed on the site for visitors. Click on the (Update Member) button located at the bottom of the page so that the changes you have made will be approved, and thus you will complete the creation of a new writer. How to change the name of the writer of articles on the site to a pseudonym After creating a pseudonym, you may want to change some or all of the names of the writer of your website articles to it. To do this, you must follow the following steps: Go to the All Articles page in the WordPress control panel. On the (All Articles) tab, click on (Screen Options) at the top, then change the number in the field next to the phrase “Number of Items on Page” to (999), then click on the Apply button in order to show all or a large number of your site’s articles on this page, and quickly modify the names of their authors.

Modify the number of items per page Select all articles whose author you want to change to an alias. If you want to select all articles appearing on the page, click on the box next to the word (Title). Select all articles appearing on this page. Choose the “Edit” option from the drop-down menu, then click the “Apply” button.

Execute the Edit command on the selected articles. In the pane that appears after clicking on the (Apply) button, you will find a drop-down list next to the word (Writer), from which choose the pseudonym of the writer you created, then click on the (Update) button. Choose the writer's alias and click Update to change the names of the article writers to him. The author names of all the articles you selected will now be changed to the alias, and the real writer's name will not appear to visitors when they browse your site's articles, and the articles will not appear on the authors' pages either. Note: If the number of articles on your site is more than 999 articles, and you want to change the names of all their authors to the pseudonym, you must repeat the process described above on all pages (all articles), each one of them separately, that is, you must do this on the first page, then move to the second page, and do it as well, then to the next one, and so on until all the pages are finished.

You can go to the following pages by using the buttons at the bottom of the (All Articles) page. Buttons for navigating between the pages of all articles in WordPress. Showing article data in WordPress after hiding it. In most cases, you will not need to show article data without hiding it first. This is because WordPress templates usually show article data by default, but you may need to re-show the data after hiding it in one of the ways we explained above. The appropriate method for resurfacing article data depends on the method in which the data was hidden.

Basically, to re-show article data in WordPress, you have to undo what you did to hide the data. If you hid the data by inserting CSS code as in the first method, you have to remove this code, and if you hid the data by deleting the code that shows it from the template files, you have to rewrite it in the place from which you deleted it. However, if you have hidden the names of article writers by changing them to a pseudonym, you cannot easily return them to what they were, but it may be useful for you to create a different pseudonym for each writer whose real name you would like to hide from the articles he publishes on your site (or some of them). Therefore, when you want to return the real writer’s name, you can go to the All Articles page for the writer’s pseudonym and change its author’s name to the real writer’s name in a manner similar to what we explained in the previous paragraph. Here we finish explaining how to show and hide article data in WordPress, including the author’s name and date. In conclusion, we point out that there are plugins that can do this task, but they do not work on all WordPress templates, so it is better to use the methods that we explained in this article, or to enlist the help of someone who is an expert in WordPress to hide your website’s article data for you.