Hide usernames in Author Pages URLs to enhance Security
As of April 2026, Smart User Slug Hider is a WordPress url plugin with 3.0K+ active installations and a 4.9/5 rating from 55 reviews. It has been downloaded 53K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 4.0+ and PHP 5.4+. Available on WordPress.org since 2014. Last updated 1 year ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are up 11% this week. Top alternative: Custom Post Type Permalinks.
The Smart User Slug Hider Plugin hides usernames in Author Pages URLs to enhance Security
Development, maintenance and support of this plugin has been retired in october 2023. You can use this plugin as long as is works for you.
There will be no more updates and I won’t answer any support questions. Thanks for your understanding.
Feel free to fork this plugin.
The plugin automatically replaces user names with 16 digits coded strings. There are no settings. Just install and forget. Deactivating the Plugin restores the default WordPress behavior.
WordPress uses the pattern example.com/author/name for author page URLs where name represents the users login name.
This means that the login names from all your users are publicly visible which is a…
What a pity that the author is retiring and feels he can no longer support this plugin because it really did do the job and very well indeed. I do hope someone will pick up the coding and get it working again. I notice now that some of my many websites are working fine but others I’ve had to delete the plugin as it’s causing a critical error making the site completely unusable as it’s unobtainable. There must be a conflict but I can’t see it. Correction is easy, it just means accessing the WP folders, finding this plugin and deleting the folder. I’ve not been able to find another plugin that so simply does what this one does. Any ideas anyone?
Does exactly what it says and minimal set up required. Just what I needed, thanks!
I had an idea inspired by a kids’ educational app that self-generates memorable passwords that might be good for a future iteration to make it more fun: instead of numbers, a noun phrase with a few random adjectives before. Just a thought.
I used a different user slug hider in the past and when it stopped being updated I switched to this one.
Best apps. but needto update for seo that are gone wrong way to user link! please solve that.
Worked right out of the box on my BuddyBoss Theme. Thank you so much for creating this important plugin.
| WordPress | 4.0+ requiredTested up to 6.3.8 |
| PHP | 5.4+ required |
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