The author wrote it. The publisher sent it live.
Who Published records the user who first publishes each post or page and displays that person directly beside the native Author column.
In an editorial workflow, the person credited as Author is not always the person who sent a post live. Who Published makes that narrow, useful distinction visible in the WordPress admin without turning your site into a full activity log. It records the first authenticated publisher and preserves that confirmed record through later edits and republishes.
Clear publisher states
- Confirmed: the authenticated user who first published the post or page. This value is immutable once recorded.
- Estimated: an explicitly marked historical estimate, based on legacy Who Published data, the last editor, the latest revision, or the credited post author. An estimate is never presented as proof.
- Unknown: there is no confirmed publisher, or historical estimation is disabled.
Historical estimation is off by default. WordPress cannot prove who published content created before plugin activation, so enabling estimation only permits clearly labelled estimates. Turning it off hides estimates without deleting confirmed publisher data.
Focused editorial accountability
- Shows a Published by column immediately after Author on Posts and Pages.
- Lets you filter list tables by confirmed publisher; when historical estimation is enabled, estimated publishers are included as clearly identified matches.
- Adds a Published by metabox in the editor with the same confirmed, estimated, or unknown state.
- Captures first publication in wp-admin, REST API, and supported programmatic publication flows.
- Keeps compatibility with existing confirmed metadata and reads legacy 1.0.0 guessed values only as optional estimates.
Who Published is not a full activity log. It does not record every change, create audit-event timelines, or display publishers on the public site. It answers one focused editorial question: who actually clicked Publish?
Screenshots
Posts table: João is the credited Author and Maria is the confirmed Published by user in the adjacent column.
Settings → Who Published: historical publisher estimation is disabled by default, with the integrity explanation visible.
Editor metabox: Maria is shown as the confirmed publisher.