Author pages in Nikola v7.7.0

Since version 7.7 Nikola renders author pages for sites with more than one author. Let me talk a little about this.

The first Nikola site I set up was for a group of friend wanting to publish tech stuff online (for example, how to build a 3D printer with recycled elements). I noticed that author names in posts weren't linked to any page. And because this is a very common feature in blogging systems, I implemented it.

The feature can be enabled in conf.py with:

ENABLE_AUTHOR_PAGES = True

As with tags, you can configure the pages path and if you want to list links to the posts or the posts themselves:

AUTHOR_PATH = "reporters"
AUTHOR_PAGES_ARE_INDEXES = False

Additionaly, this is not required, you can add a little bio to each (or some) authors and hide others (this is, don't generate pages for them):

AUTHOR_PAGES_DESCRIPTIONS = {
    DEFAULT_LANG: {
        "Juanjo Conti": "Python coder and writer.",
        "Roberto Alsina": "Nikola father."
    },
}
HIDDEN_AUTHORS = ['Guest']

If you want to link to these pages in your own theme, you can use something like this (Mako example):

% if author_pages_generated:
    <a href="${_link('author', post.author())}">${post.author()}</a>
% else:
    ${post.author()}
% endif

You can see the feature in action in Nikola blog: author page example, all authors page example.

Hope you enjoy it!