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Upgrading to Co-Authors Plus 4.0

Version 4.0 is the first major release in six years. Most sites will upgrade without intervention, but there are a handful of changes that can affect third-party code or downstream plugins. This guide covers each of them and what to do.

If you only need the bullet-point view, the CHANGELOG entry for 4.0.0 lists every change; this document focuses on the ones likely to require action.

Minimum WordPress 6.4

The minimum supported WordPress version moved from 5.9 to 6.4. 6.4 has been the practical floor for the block editor integration for some time; this release makes it explicit. If you cannot upgrade WordPress, stay on the 3.7 branch.

Block editor data store is now the core entity store

Before 4.0, the sidebar maintained a custom Redux store under the cap/authors namespace for the authors of the post being edited. That store has been removed. Co-author data now reads and writes through WordPress's own core/editor store, the same way any other post attribute does.

Why it matters. The old arrangement was invisible to the block editor's autosave, revision, and collaborative-editing machinery, which is why the Save button never lit up when you changed the co-authors. Using the core entity store is what makes Co-Authors Plus compatible with real-time collaboration.

If you called select( 'cap/authors' ):

// Before 4.0
const authors = wp.data.select( 'cap/authors' ).getAuthors();

// 4.0 onwards
const termIds = wp.data.select( 'core/editor' ).getEditedPostAttribute( 'coauthors' );

If you dispatched to cap/authors:

// Before 4.0
wp.data.dispatch( 'cap/authors' ).setAuthors( newAuthors );

// 4.0 onwards
wp.data.dispatch( 'core/editor' ).editPost( { coauthors: termIds } );

getEditedPostAttribute( 'coauthors' ) returns an array of taxonomy term IDs. To resolve those to rich author data (display name, avatar, etc.), use the new authors-by-term-ids REST endpoint — see REST API reference.

Guest-author custom post type is now private

The guest-author CPT was registered with public => true since forever, which meant it leaked into anything that scanned the list of public post types — most visibly, Yoast SEO's sitemap and content analysis. As of 4.0 it's registered with public => false and show_ui => true. The admin editor continues to work, but front-end queries for ?post_type=guest-author no longer resolve.

If you were implicitly relying on this (for example, custom code iterating get_post_types( [ 'public' => true ] )), the CPT will no longer appear. Either consume guest authors through the plugin's documented template tags, opt the CPT back in with register_post_type_args, or filter it into your own list.

Verifying the change on your site:

$args = get_post_type_object( 'guest-author' );
var_dump( $args->public, $args->publicly_queryable, $args->show_ui, $args->has_archive );
// bool(false) bool(false) bool(true) bool(false)

COAUTHORS_PLUS_PATH and COAUTHORS_PLUS_URL removed

The deprecated.php file has been deleted. The two constants it defined were moved into that file in 2013 and have been unreferenced in the plugin ever since. If any third-party code still uses them, switch to WordPress's plugin_dir_path() and plugin_dir_url().

Filters deprecated on REST saves

Two filters are now soft-deprecated when a post is saved through the REST API:

  • coauthors_post_list_pluck_field
  • coauthors_post_get_coauthor_by_field

They still fire and still return their filtered values; the change is that a _deprecated_hook notice is emitted and both will be removed in a future release. The replacement is the WordPress core set_object_terms action on the author taxonomy, which runs on any save path (REST, classic editor, CLI).

// Before 4.0 — specific to REST saves
add_filter( 'coauthors_post_list_pluck_field', function () {
    return 'user_nicename';
} );

// 4.0 onwards — covers every save path
add_action( 'set_object_terms', function ( $object_id, $terms, $tt_ids, $taxonomy ) {
    if ( 'author' !== $taxonomy ) {
        return;
    }
    // Your logic here.
}, 10, 4 );

Reference