hacks-guide-minimal-mistakes-theme/_posts/2012-03-15-layout-author-override.md

---
title: "Layout: Author Override"
author: Billy Rick
excerpt: "A post to test author overrides using a data file."
---

For those of you who may have content written by multiple authors on your site you can now assign different authors to each post if desired.

Previously the theme used a global author for the entire site and those attributes would be used in all bylines, social networking links, Twitter Card attribution, and Google Authorship. These `owner` variables were defined in `config.yml`

Start by modifying or creating a new `authors.yml` file in the `_data` folder and add your authors using the following format.

```yaml
# /_data/authors.yml

Billy Rick:
  name: Billy Rick
  uri: http://thewhip.com
  email: billy@rick.com
  bio: "What do you want, jewels? I am a very extravagant man."
  avatar: bio-photo-2.jpg
  twitter: extravagantman

Cornelius Fiddlebone:
  name: Cornelius Fiddlebone
  email: cornelius@thewhip.com
  bio: "I ordered what?"
  avatar: bio-photo.jpg
  twitter: rhymeswithsackit
```

To assign Billy Rick as an author for our post. You'd add the following YAML front matter to a post:

```yaml
author: Billy Rick
```