Hi there,
I've managed it.
After extracting post title just add this if you want it to be after a line break (adjust to your own needs)
//extract meta data : author name / date of publication
$ppc_author = $post->post_author; // extracting author of post
$ppc_postdate = $post->post_date; // post date
$ppc_author_first_name = get_the_author_meta( user_firstname, $ppc_author ); //first name through ID
$ppc_author_last_name = get_the_author_meta( user_lastname, $ppc_author );// last name through ID
$ppc_str .= '<p class="meta-info">'.By.' '.$ppc_author_first_name.' '.$ppc_author_last_name.' '.'—'. mysql2date('F jS, Y', $ppc_postdate) .'</p>';
This outputs author name in a nice way + date
Don’t thank me..
Thank you urkekg for getting me to write php – never done it before ??