Provenance
Authorship tags for shared links: author, article:author and fediverse:creator
Quick answer
Four head tags describe who wrote a page: the HTML author meta tag, Open Graph article:author, twitter:creator and fediverse:creator. Only fediverse:creator currently shows a visible author line on link previews, on Mastodon, and only after the author approves your domain in their profile. The others are cheap to add and are read by some tools, so output all four from one place.
On this page
The four tags
| Tag | Value | Where it is read |
|---|---|---|
| meta name="author" | Author's name | Browsers, readers, some crawlers |
| meta property="article:author" | Profile URL or name | Open Graph consumers; mostly ignored by large feeds today |
| meta name="twitter:creator" | @handle on X | X card attribution in some layouts |
| meta name="fediverse:creator" | @user@instance | Mastodon preview cards |
The Open Graph protocol defines article:author as part of the article object type, alongside article:published_time and article:section. It accepts a profile URL and may repeat for several authors. Networks that once used it to link profiles have largely stopped, but it costs nothing and keeps your markup complete.
fediverse:creator, step by step
Mastodon added author attribution in 2024, as described on the Mastodon project blog. When a shared page names an author with fediverse:creator, the preview card shows the author and links to their account. The feature is designed to resist impersonation: the author has to approve the website first.
Add the tag per author
Print
<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@name@instance.social">in the head of each article, using the author's own handle, not the publication's.Approve the domain
The author opens their Mastodon profile settings and adds your domain under author attribution. Without that step the card shows no attribution.
Store handles on the user profile
In WordPress, save each author's handle as user meta, so the tag follows the byline automatically and guest authors can have their own.
Test with a fresh post
Share a new address from a Mastodon account. Cards are cached, so an address already shared before the tag existed may keep its old card.
WordPress code
If your SEO plugin does not output these tags, add them from a child theme or a small site plugin. Read the handle from user meta and escape every value.
add_action( 'wp_head', function () {
if ( ! is_singular( 'post' ) ) { return; }
$author_id = (int) get_post_field( 'post_author', get_queried_object_id() );
$name = get_the_author_meta( 'display_name', $author_id );
$fedi = get_the_author_meta( 'fediverse_handle', $author_id );
$xhandle = get_the_author_meta( 'x_handle', $author_id );
printf( '<meta name="author" content="%s">', esc_attr( $name ) );
printf( '<meta property="article:author" content="%s">', esc_url( get_author_posts_url( $author_id ) ) );
if ( $xhandle ) { printf( '<meta name="twitter:creator" content="%s">', esc_attr( $xhandle ) ); }
if ( $fedi ) { printf( '<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="%s">', esc_attr( $fedi ) ); }
} );Check the page source after adding it. As with twitter card tags, the most common fault is two plugins printing the same tag with different values.
Why authorship tags matter now
Readers increasingly judge a shared link by who stands behind it. A card that names a real writer, linked to an account with a history, answers the question a label cannot: is there a person accountable for this? It is also portable. Unlike an image credential, a head tag is read fresh every time a network fetches the page, so it does not depend on the file surviving recompression.
Authorship tags are only as honest as the byline behind them. Pair them with a real author page and structured data, covered in byline schema for human authors, and with a clear disclosure policy as described in the publisher guide to AI content in feeds.
For the wider picture, see the provenance and authorship section. Readers who get this far often also need how platforms label AI content, and what triggers the label or Content Credentials on shared images: what survives a share.
Questions
Why does my fediverse:creator tag show nothing?
The author has not approved your domain in their Mastodon profile, or the network cached a card from before the tag existed.
Can a site use its own account as the fediverse creator?
It can, but the feature is meant for individual writers. A publication account adds little that the site name does not already show.
Does article:author affect Facebook previews?
Not visibly today. Keep it for completeness; it does no harm.
Hannah Voss, Editor. Checks every guide against a working WordPress install and the networks' current documentation. Last reviewed September 2026.
Related reading
- Byline schema in WordPress: marking up a human authorMark up article authors with schema.org Person data in WordPress: the fields search engines read, author pages, sameAs profiles and common mistakes.4 min read
- Twitter cards on X: tags and testingSet up Twitter card tags so links to your WordPress posts show a large image on X: the summary_large_image card, fallbacks to Open Graph, sizes and testing.3 min read
- Adding Open Graph tags in WordPressAdd Open Graph tags to WordPress with an SEO plugin or theme code: the four required tags, image tags, per-post overrides, and how to avoid duplicate tags.3 min read
- AI-generated content in social feeds: what publishers should doHow AI-generated images and text change what happens when your posts are shared, and the practical steps publishers can take: disclosure, provenance, bylines.4 min read