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.
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