Just recently, we shared why it is important to stop broadcasting your login name on your blog if you are using WordPress and that got some people thinking and acting – always a good thing.

If you changed your display name or have always used different login name and display name, good for you! Here’s something else you need to look into, especially if your site is established.

Your login name could still be in the URL

By default, WordPress will use your login name as part of the URL to your author’s archive. This is the page where all posts made by you (or a specific author) is displayed. WordPress doesn’t have a built-in feature to let you change that.

Of course, there’s always a plugin for that. That’s why we love WordPress right? Out of the many plugins that do this, I like this one – Edit Author Slug. You can make it default where all other authors and users’ URLs automatically use something other than their username. You can also manually overwrite that for each user.

One thing to note when changing the author slug (or URL), your old links are likely to break. This may or may not be a huge problem for you which is why it’s important to get this set up from the get go the next time you start a new WordPress site.

Oh and another thing, if you are not the only author on your site, you will want to get this settled for everyone. Even if they are not an admin user, it’s always good practice because others may not be as careful as you are with their logins. Personally, where multiple authors are involved, I find it easier to simply change the username in the database for everyone. This way, the URL for authors can stay the same, there will be no broken links. The only people affected are the authors with whom you should be able to work things out.