Change WordPress Author Permalink and Solve Author Permalink 404 Issue

WordPress author permalink doesn’t looks good when the URL is something like: http://example.com/author/Sam%20West/ This permalink definitely doesn’t looks neat and is also not SEO friendly. So what now? Well, you can just change WordPress author permalink URL to something more SEO friendly and clean. Don’t you think that permalink should be something like this:

http://example.com/author/sam-west/

With some minor tweaking in WordPress database, you can change WordPress Author archive permalink. Using this method, only permalink will change and the WordPress username will remain the same. There is no such option in WordPress Admin > Users > All Users section, to just change the author permalink URL. Therefore we will be delving in database for doing this task. Sometimes because of a space in between the name, it also leads to 404 error in author permalink. So here’s the solution to all the problems:

Change Author Archive Permalink in WordPress

NOTE: Please note that this involves editing database. If you are not comfortable doing this, then first take a complete backup of WordPress database and then proceed to follow this tutorial.

1. Open your hosting control panel, also known as cPanel. Find and click on phpMyAdmin link.



2. Select WordPress database from upper left side of the screen. This is the database which you have created during the installation of WordPress.



3. From wp_users table, click on “Browse“.



4. Now locate the row that has the username which you are looking to change. After locating the row, click on the Edit button (pencil icon).
5. In the user_nicename field, enter the desired URL. Finally, click on Go to save the changes.

That’s done. Now your author permalink archive URL should be displayed at this new URL. This should also solve that 404 page error in author permalink.