Author Pages: Who Wrote This and Who Checked It

On this page

• Why two people per article
• File structure
• Author page frontmatter
• Author photo
• Adding author and reviewer to articles
• What the byline renders
• JSON-LD structured data
• Build gate
• Setting up the authors topic index
• AI authors

Every article on a Wire site can declare who wrote it and who reviewed it. This is not cosmetic. Search engines use authorship signals to evaluate content trustworthiness. Google's E-E-A-T framework (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) explicitly values identifiable people behind content. Wire enforces this through a build gate: if you have an authors/ directory, every article must have a valid author or the build refuses.

Why two people per article

Wire supports both an author and a reviewer on every article. The pattern mirrors a real editorial workflow. One person writes, another checks.

The author is whoever produced the content (a human expert, an AI operator, or both). The reviewer is whoever approved it for publication. On AI-assisted sites this usually means the AI writes and a human reviews. On human-written sites it means an editor signs off.

Both appear in the article byline. Both appear in the JSON-LD author array as separate Person entities. Search engines see two named, linked people standing behind the content instead of one. That signal compounds.

File structure

Author pages live under docs/authors/. Each author gets a subdirectory with an index.md:

docs/authors/
  index.md                          # Topic index page (layout: page)
  jane-smith/
    index.md                        # Author profile page
    photo.jpg                       # Optional. Must be JPEG, exact filename.
  wire/
    index.md

The subdirectory name is the slug you use in author: and reviewer: frontmatter. Keep it lowercase, hyphen-separated, no numbers.

Author page frontmatter

---
title: "Jane Smith: Content Strategist"
description: Helps B2B companies build content pipelines that rank.
layout: page
short_title: Jane Smith
role: Content Strategist
schema_type: ProfilePage
created: 2026-01-15
linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith
---

Field by field:

The first paragraph of the author page body becomes the byline description. Keep it one sentence, plain prose. Wire strips markdown links automatically.

Author photo

Place a JPEG named exactly photo.jpg in the author's directory:

docs/authors/jane-smith/photo.jpg

Wire looks for this file at build time. If it exists, the byline renders the photo. If it doesn't, the byline uses the site logo as a fallback. Only JPEG is supported. The filename must be exactly photo.jpg, not photo.jpeg or anything else.

If your .gitignore excludes images, force-add it:

git add -f docs/authors/jane-smith/photo.jpg

Adding author and reviewer to articles

On every article page (layout: article, or auto-defaulted articles):

---
title: "Advanced SEO Strategies for 2026"
description: Techniques that compound over time.
created: 2026-03-10
short_title: SEO Strategies
author: jane-smith
reviewer: christopher-helm
---

If the site has no authors/ directory, these fields are ignored and no gate is enforced. The gate only activates when you commit to the author system by creating the directory.

What the byline renders

Article pages render an author byline card below the content body. When a reviewer is set, a second card appears below the first.

[photo]  Jane Smith
         Content Strategist
         Helps B2B companies build content pipelines that rank.
         LinkedIn

[photo]  Christopher Helm
         Creator of Wire
         Builds systems that make work unnecessary.

The author name links to the author's profile page. The reviewer card is identical in structure but does not show a LinkedIn link (the author link is primary).

JSON-LD structured data

Wire generates an Article schema for content pages. With one author:

{
  "@type": "Article",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Jane Smith",
    "url": "https://yoursite.com/authors/jane-smith/",
    "jobTitle": "Content Strategist"
  }
}

With a reviewer, author becomes an array:

{
  "@type": "Article",
  "author": [
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Jane Smith",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com/authors/jane-smith/",
      "jobTitle": "Content Strategist"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Christopher Helm",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com/authors/christopher-helm/",
      "jobTitle": "Creator of Wire"
    }
  ]
}

Author profile pages get ProfilePage schema with a nested Person entity. This is the correct schema.org type for personal profile pages.

Build gate

When docs/authors/ exists with at least one author page, Wire validates authorship on every build:

• Every article page must have author: frontmatter pointing to a valid slug
• If reviewer: is set, it must also be a valid slug
• The gate is silent on pages inside authors/ itself

Errors are specific and actionable:

BUILD REFUSED: docs/guides/seo-guide/index.md: missing author.
Add author: <slug> matching a page in authors/.
Available: jane-smith, wire

BUILD REFUSED: docs/guides/seo-guide/index.md: reviewer 'unknown-person' not found in authors/.
Available: jane-smith, wire

The build lists available slugs in the error. You cannot accidentally ship an article with a typo in the author slug.

Setting up the authors topic index

docs/authors/index.md is a standard topic index page. It needs layout: page and short_title. Wire auto-generates a listing of child pages from it. Your author profiles appear there without any extra configuration.

---
title: "Authors: The Team Behind This Site"
description: The people who write and review content here.
layout: page
short_title: Authors
---

Add authors to your wire.yml nav:

nav:
  - Authors:
    - Authors: authors/index.md
    - Jane Smith: authors/jane-smith/index.md
    - Wire: authors/wire/index.md

AI authors

Wire sites that use AI for content generation should declare the AI as an author rather than hiding it. Wire itself is listed as an author on this site, with Christopher reviewing every article. This is the honest approach. Readers increasingly expect transparency and Google's guidance rewards it.

An AI author page looks identical to a human one. The role field carries the distinction: AI Author versus Content Strategist.

Related: Guides overview, Configuration Reference for wire.yml setup, Writing for Wire for content standards.