Custom field in WordPress

[slobjones]

I'm trying to place a Guest Author field in my WP index.php and single.php templates. Inserted some code in functions.php:

// guest author custom field
add_filter( 'the_author', 'guest_author_name' );
add_filter( 'get_the_author_display_name', 'guest_author_name' );

function guest_author_name( $name ) {
global $post;

$author = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'guest-author', true );

if ( $author )
$name = $author;

return $name;
}

 

This works fine when I select the custom field and fill in a guest author's name. But if I don't use a custom field because I'm publishing my own post, the author's name is left blank on the blog!

 

I edited my index.php and single.php templates to replace this:

<?php the_author (); ?>

 

with this:

<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'guest-author', true); ?>

 

What am I missing here?

 

Thanks.