WordPress comes with built-in support for SEO friendly URL structure, also known as pretty permalinks. This feature allows you to choose URLs for your posts, pages, and categories by editing their slugs. However, WordPress does not allow you to choose a slug for author pages. In this article, we will show you how to change Author URL slug and base in WordPress.
What is a URL Slug and URL Base?
In WordPress terminology, a slug is a URL friendly title of a publicly viewable page in WordPress. It looks like this
http://example.com/2014/04/adventures-of-sherlock-holmes
http://example.com/category/detective-fiction
http://example.com/tags/classics
In these examples, adventures-of-sherlock-holmes, detective-fiction, and classics are slugs for a post, category, and a tag.
Users can change the post slug when writing a post. Slugs for categories and tags can be changed by editing an individual category and tag.
Now if you look at the category URL in the example above, then you will notice that it uses /category/ prefix for category URLs. This prefix is called base.
The category base can be changed from Settings » Permalinks to anything you want.
By default WordPress uses your username as author URL slug, and /author/ as the base. A user with the username JohnDoe will have an author URL like this:
http://example.com/author/johndoe
Changing Author Slug in WordPress
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Edit Author Slug plugin. Upon activation, this plugin will add a group of options to each user profile page.
If you want to edit the slug of a user in your site, then you need to go to Users » All Users. Next click on the Edit link below a username which will take you to the Edit User screen. Simply scroll down to Edit Author Slug section, and you will see a number of choices that you can use as author slug. You can even enter a custom slug.
Once you have made the changes, click on the save button and preview your site. Now when you click on the author name in a post to view author archives, you will see that it is using the author slug you choose for them.
Changing Author Base
If you’re building a site where you want to change the author base from /author/ to something else, then you can do that as well with this plugin.
You need to click on Settings » Edit Author Slug. Here you will see an option to change the author base and even choose different author base for users with different user roles.
Once you are finished, click on the save changes button to store your settings. You can now preview your site, and click on author link to see the changes in action.
Remember: changing author slugs and base on an established website can have negative SEO ramifications specially if your author archives are indexed.
We hope this article helped you change author slug and base in WordPress. If you liked this article, then subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
Thank you so much! I had no idea this plugin existed. Now, I have both more professional-looking (and SEO-friendly) author slugs and my usernames are fully private, so I don’t have to worry about would-be hackers. It was the one thing my security plugin didn’t seem to deal with, so I’m very pleased.
I can also confirm that this plugin works with the latest version of WordPress, even though it technically hasn’t been tested for it (last update was a year ago). I guess when a plugin works, it works.
Thanks for this post! My author slug was something like myname_somerandomcharcter and since it was my username i couldn’t even change it and all my posts had this author slug. SEO analysis would reveal this slug as SEO unfriendly URL. Now I have changed it using this plugin! Thanks again!
Great article, I have a problem though.
I set a custom structure in the permalink settings to article/%postname%/. However it also affects my author pages and now I’m left with article/author/%author%.
Please can you help?
Hi there
Thanks for this article. Is it possible to do the following:
[URLs are examples]
I have a site xyz.com. Under the URL xyz.com/site1/site2 i have the posts from wordpress. If i open now the Post the url is like xyz.com/{postname} but i’d like to have xyz.com/site1/site2/{postname}
Can you help me?
BR
Phil
You are only able to create a URL which consists of the PRIMARY category and the post name.
Head over to Settings->Permalinks and choose “custom structure”. In the your can click on the buttons below the input field or paste the following:
/%category%/%postname%/
In WordPress 4.8.1 ? i am unable to find it. help me
Quick question about old URLs and search engines. Since I’ve been using this site for about 11 years, I know the old author URLs are in the search engines and possibly other places as well.
Shouldn’t we add a redirect to .htaccess so all old links are redirected to the new author URL?
Thank you for your advice.
-Matt
Hi Matt,
Yes, if your author pages are indexed by search engines, then you will need to setup redirects. See our guide on how to create redirects in WordPress for detailed instructions.
Thanks for your quick reply!
To better assist other users, this is what I came up with. Please correct any .htaccess coding issues as you see fit.
# Redirect Old author URL to new one 3/14/17 (Matt)
RedirectMatch 301 /old-user/ http://www.example.com/author/new-user/
Thanks, great post.
yes helpful
Thank you very much. I love this solution.
You add this in your theme function.php
global $wp_rewrite;
$wp_rewrite->author_base = “member”; // or whatever
$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();
OMG, a lifesaver! A hacker used my exact (and weird) username. I finally figured out that it was being displayed in author/username (even though Woo Canvas asks me how I want to display my name), and this is the only post (I’ve been searching hours) to offer a simple solution for a non-programmer. I love you, WPBeginner….
Must Plugin be used to change User Slug, too many plugin can really cause your wordpress site to become slow in loading