Multiple "About Author" Boxes.

I’m using Mantra theme, and I did a search in the wp/wp-content/themes/mantra files for things like get_the_author and get_avatar.
I found 2 major instances – the code to make byline at the top of a post and the code to make the bio at the bottom.

for the bio, (in single.php) I rewrote the code to take an array of authors instead of a singular one, and loop through the array.
I also added a snippet of code above it to check for coauthor plugin, and call it if present or wrap the get_the_author result with an array so it would work with my modified code.

Obviously I wrapped the existing code in a loop, iterating through each coauthor to feed to the existing code.
Then I had to figure out how to get the get_the_author’s_blahblahblah() functions to get the correct info for each coauthor rather than the default author. I found that most of the functions would take an optional ID argument, so I saved it as $user_id and added it to the function calls. I think I had to replace one function with an explicit call to look up the display_name or else I got the same name repeated.

<?php
    // Safety first. Make sure code will work if coauthors plugin is off
    $authornum = 0;
    if ( function_exists( 'get_coauthors' ) ) {
	$coauthors = get_coauthors();
    } else {
	$coauthors = array();
	$coauthors[] = get_the_author();
    } ?>
<?php
    foreach( $coauthors as $coauthor ) {
	$authornum = $authornum + 1;
	$user_id = $coauthor->ID;
 ?>
<?php if ( get_the_author_meta( 'description', $user_id ) ) : // If a user has filled out their description, show a bio on their entries  ?>
					<div id="entry-author-info">
						<div id="author-avatar">
							<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( 'user_email', $user_id ), apply_filters( 'mantra_author_bio_avatar_size', 60 ) ); ?>
						</div><!-- #author-avatar -->
						<div id="author-description">
							<h2><?php printf( esc_attr__( 'About %s', 'mantra' ), get_the_author_meta( 'display_name', $user_id ) ); ?></h2>
							<?php the_author_meta( 'description', $user_id ); ?>
							<div id="author-link">
								<a>">
									<?php printf( __( 'View all posts by ','mantra').'%s <span class="meta-nav">→</span>', get_the_author_meta('display_name', $user_id) ); ?>
								</a>
							</div><!-- #author-link	-->
						</div><!-- #author-description -->
					</div><!-- #entry-author-info -->
<?php endif;
} ?>

[Moderator Note: Please post code & markup between backticks or use the code button. Your posted code may now have been damaged by the forum’s parser.]

It looks like for me, I would need to update the author-template.php page. Do I need to update all functions that reference the_author and replace it with coauthor?