Guest authors, former staff or contributors who only send in their texts need a user account to appear as the author of a post – but they do not need to be able to sign in.
Guest User adds a checkbox “Is guest” to the user edit screen and to the “Add New User” screen. An account marked as guest
The account itself, its posts and its author archive stay as they are. Uncheck the box and the account can sign in again.
Developers can check an account with guest_user_is_guest( $user_id ).