Mostly worked, but need some additions

I cracked it!
In my case I first created an author.php page (my theme lacked one) from the archive.php by cloning and cleaning it.
Then I found this piece of code:

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>

It basically says: if the authors has published some posts, then…
Well, I just added: “OR NOT!”

<?php if ( have_posts() || !have_posts() ) : ?>

And it works beautifully ([see here](http://www.minuticontati.com/autore/cristiana-morroni/))! The “OR NOT” is “|| = OR” and “! = NOT”.

Also, I had to change the way the template was retrieving the Author’s avatar, because get_avatar does not work correctly if the Author/User hasn’t published anything yet, or if his/her posts are all still “Private” and not “Public”.

I studied the Codex and came upon the following solution. Instead of:

echo get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( ‘ID’ ), 80 );

I use:

get_avatar( $curauth->ID, 80 );

You have to set the $curauth variable properly first thing after the get_header function, though.

get_header();
$curauth = (get_query_var(‘author_name’)) ? get_user_by(‘slug’, get_query_var(‘author_name’)) : get_userdata(get_query_var(‘author’));