WP Author Slug

Description

This plugin replaces the author slug with a sanitized version of the user’s display name.

This plugin will not prevent hackers from finding out your login name but the login name won’t be visible
in the author archive’s URL, which works towards your friendly URLs with using your display name.

DO NOT use this on a site with more than 1000 registered users, as updating all of their nicenames at once might break your site.

Installation

1. Download WP Author Slug.
2. Unzip the folder into the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.

Reviews

Don’t use if you have a large user database

Peter July 6, 2021 1 reply

This plugin would probably work OK if you have a small number of users (e.g. if your site doesn’t allow public login). But if you have a large number of users (e.g. if you are running ecommerce or allow users to register for other reasons), this plugin will probably take down your site. The reason is that there are hooks that run when you activate or delete the plugin. It runs database fetch and update queries on every user in your database, all in-line on the request (rather than background via a cron). So if you have a thousand or more users it attempts to do a thousand or more database writes when you click Activate or Delete from the plugins list. This will likely grind your website to a halt. It would be better/useable if you could either choose to only apply these scripts to specific user types (e.g. Author) or if you could run the update in batches in the background.

Does the job

cool_recep November 6, 2020 2 replies

Errors are fixed.

Good one!

Husgrove June 23, 2019

Works as expected, recommend.

Excellent

Knut Sparhell August 11, 2017

Easy way to add some obscurity to login guessing. But please update as it’s over 2 years now.

I was surprised, how easy it was

Terras Design September 3, 2016

…works fine. Thank you ??

Excellent Plugin

Juba September 3, 2016

After discovering this WordPress security flaw, I found this plugin and it works a treat. Thanks Konstantin.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

4

• Moved clean up to plugin deactivation. This makes sure author slugs are only modified with the plugin active.
• Updated utility class.
• Tested with WordPress 6.1.

3

• Maintenance release.
• Checks if keys and properties exist before using them.
• Tested with WordPress 5.6.

2

• Maintenance release.
• Updated code to adhere to WordPress Coding Standards.
• Tested with WordPress 5.0.

1.3.0

• Maintenance release.
• Tested with WordPress 4.0.

1.2.2

• Updated utility class.
• Tested with WordPress 3.4.1.

1.2.1

• Updated uninstall.php and activation hook to use WordPress User API instead of custom queries.
• Updated utility class.

1.2

• Tested for WordPress 3.3.1.

1.1

• Tested for WordPress 3.1.1.
• Added complete uninstall routine.
• Added compatibility for pre-3.1 multisite installs.

1.0

• Initial Release.