Why & how to change Author URL for WordPress Security

By default, the author URL slug is the same as your login username selected on a WordPress website. This makes it easy for anyone to guess your login username by looking at the author URL slug.

Let’s understand with an example

For example, if my WordPress username is davadmin – this will automatically make my WordPress Author URL as dominDOTcom/author/davadmin

Now, if I want to make URL slug davinder – then I have to change WordPress username to davinder. In this case, even though my author URL is cleaned up but the WP username davinder is still exposed.

Change only the Author URL slug

I can easily keep the WP username davadmin and still edit to make front-end author URL as dominDOTcom/author/davinder

This can be achieved using Edit Author Slug plugin ( I use this plugin on every install, makes life so easy).

1. After the plugin install, go to Users > All Users in WP dashboard.
2. Click edit under the specific user listed there.
3. Scroll down to the bottom to the “Edit Author Slug” section.
4. Add the new name that you want to display as author URL in the ‘custom’ box.

This will change the author URL slug, but the original username selected for WordPress login will remain the same. Neat, isn’t it?

Note: This plugin changes the user_nicename field in the database. So, you can disable and remove this plugin after making the change. Your changes will remain there even on future WordPress updates.