emdash-author-box

A polished author box plugin for EmDash CMS that turns existing EmDash bylines into a reusable presentation layer.

It ships with:

• an authorBox Portable Text block for editors
• a reusable AuthorBox.astro component for theme developers
• sitewide settings for avatar, bio, website link, layout, and contributor order defaults
• graceful handling for missing bios, avatars, websites, and empty bylines

Compatibility

| Mode | Supported | | --- | --- | | Trusted install via plugins: [] | Yes | | Portable Text block rendering | Yes | | Direct theme component import | Yes | | Sandboxed install via sandboxed: [] | No | | EmDash marketplace bundle / emdash plugin publish | No |

Why not marketplace publishing yet?

This plugin depends on componentsEntry and admin.portableTextBlocks, which currently require EmDash native/trusted mode. Current EmDash marketplace bundling rejects Portable Text block plugins, so the supported release path today is npm publish + trusted install in astro.config.mjs.

Installation

npm install emdash-author-box

Then register it in your site:

// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from "astro/config";
import emdash from "emdash/astro";
import { authorBoxPlugin } from "emdash-author-box";

export default defineConfig({
	integrations: [
		emdash({
			plugins: [authorBoxPlugin()],
		}),
	],
});

What the plugin adds

Admin settings

The plugin creates an Author Box settings page with defaults for:

• showing contributor avatars
• showing contributor bios
• showing contributor website links
• choosing compact vs expanded multi-contributor layout
• choosing primary-first vs byline-order sorting

Editor block

Editors can insert an authorBox Portable Text block and optionally override:

• heading text
• layout
• bio visibility
• website visibility
• all contributors vs primary contributor only

Direct theme component

Theme authors can import the same presentation layer directly:

---
import { AuthorBox } from "emdash-author-box/astro";
---

<AuthorBox
	id="post-contributors"
	heading="Meet the contributors"
	headingLevel="h2"
	showPrimaryBadge={true}
	content={post}
	contributors={post.bylines}
/>

Additional component-only props:

• id — optional DOM id for the rendered <aside>
• headingLevel — choose from "p" | "h2" | "h3" | "h4"
• showPrimaryBadge — show or hide the primary-contributor badge for multi-author output

id is intended for direct component usage. Do not pass a shared id through <PortableText ...> unless you want every rendered author box on that page to receive the same DOM id.

Portable Text usage

For the authorBox block to resolve the current entry’s bylines, pass the current content context through your Portable Text renderer:

---
import { PortableText } from "emdash/ui";
---

<PortableText
	value={post.data.content}
	content={post}
	contributors={post.bylines}
/>

The plugin auto-registers its authorBox component through componentsEntry, so you do not need to wire the block manually.

Data contract

The component is designed around EmDash’s hydrated byline shape:

type ContentBylineCredit = {
	byline: {
		id: string;
		displayName: string;
		bio: string | null;
		avatarMediaId: string | null;
		websiteUrl: string | null;
	};
	sortOrder: number;
	roleLabel: string | null;
};

If no usable contributors are available, the component renders nothing.

Design behavior

• one contributor → single spotlight card
• multiple contributors + expanded layout → equal-weight contributor cards
• multiple contributors + compact layout → tighter contributor list with clamped bios
• the resolved primary contributor is badged in multi-author output
• no avatar media → initials fallback
• invalid website URLs → omitted safely
• duplicate contributor entries → deduplicated without losing primary state

Development

npm install
npm run check

Migration from the scoped package

This package was previously published as @masonjames/emdash-author-box. Use emdash-author-box for new installs. No content or settings migration is expected because the EmDash plugin ID remains author-box.

Publishing

This package is meant to be published to npm:

npm publish --access public

Do not use emdash plugin publish for this package today. EmDash’s current marketplace bundler rejects native Portable Text block plugins.