Luckily, there is an easy workaround that doesn’t require any coding knowledge to achieve the desired result. This is thanks to the fact that WordPress supports the integration of many free and helpful plugins.

What is an author slug?

First, let’s clarify what is an author slug.

According to Brandon Allen, the author of Edit Author Slug, on standard WordPress installs, it’s the final part of an author permalink. For example, https://example.com/author/author-slug/

In relation to WordPress internals, the author slug is the same as the user_nicename field found in a WP_User object or the user table in the database.

It’s logical that most WordPress website owners want to choose their custom author slugs and the importance grows the more users you have on your website.

How to Change the Author Slug

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to be using one of the easiest WordPress plugins for changing the author slug: Edit Author Slug. This plugin has over 100 000 active installations and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. The best thing is that it’s free and tested by many people. I personally use it on both of my websites and I have never had any issues.

Edit Author Slug is an easy plugin to set up and use and does exactly what it states in its title. There is also no unnecessary bloat so your website’s speed won’t be affected.

First of all, log in to your WordPress Admin Area and head to Plugins. Search for Edit Author Slug, then Install and Activate the plugin.

To customize your own author slug, visit your profile page. This also applies to other users. If you are the admin, you can change any author slug by simply going to the Users tab. Once you’ve picked the user you want to modify, click on Edit.

Scroll down and find Edit Author Slug.

There, you have multiple options for how to adjust the author slug. You can do it according to the above profile information that they or you have filled out or create their/your custom author slug.

In the example above, the author URL will look like this: https://example.com/author/kitsune

Now, if you are fine with the default author base (the /author/ part of the author URL), you can leave it at that. But you can also change that portion if you really want to.

How to Change the Author Base of the Author URL

To change the author base, go to Settings » Edit Author Slug.

Here, you can change it to anything you want. I like to keep it at default, though.

You can also opt-in to have a role-based author base.

WordPress comes with six pre-defined roles:

• Super Admin,
• Administrator,
• Editor,
• Author,
• Contributor,
• and Subscriber.

When you set the user’s Author Base according to their role, it will basically add the %ba_eas_author_role% rewrite tag to customize the role-based author base.

If you set the author base to cutiepie/%ba_eas_author_role%, the resulting author structure will be http://example.com/cutiepie/role-slug/author-slug.

There is also an option to change the role slugs for all six pre-defined roles above.

So let’s say you are the administrator and chose your role slug to “cutie”. Your author slug has already been changed to “kitsune” and your author base is “cutiepie”.

The changes described above would result in something like this: http://example.com/cutiepie/cutie/kitsune

Apart from these two simple yet useful features, the plugin also offers a function for Automatic Author Slug Creation.

How to Automatically Update Author Slugs

Let me start by saying that this is a fancy feature that will override any manual Author Slug changes you’ve made. With this function enabled, people that frequently change their profiles could also hurt the SEO of your website, so be careful with this one.

For those that have decided to proceed, you can set the author slug structure for users from the following:

• username (default)
• nickname
• displayname
• firstname
• lastname
• firstname-lastname
• lastname-firstname
• userid
• hash

When you tick off the automatic updating, it will work only when a user can’t edit Author Slugs on their own.

Then there is also a bulk updater, which will update all users at once according to the author slug structure that you chose. Once you hit save, it will take effect.

Final Thoughts

While WordPress should really integrate a feature for editing the author slug, we can now stick to plugins to do the job to stay on the safer side. After all, the majority of bloggers aren’t developers but rather regular folks who like to write about their passions.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a pro to change the author slug. With a little help from a lightweight yet useful plugin like Edit Author Slug, you can easily make the adjustments you need.

The post How to Change the Author Slug in WordPress appeared first on Geeky GF.

Modern image formats like WebP offer superior image compression by decreasing file size. This reduces bandwidth usage and speeds up website loading.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily use the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin to serve WEbP images.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.

What is the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin?

EWWW Image Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that lets you optimize all your images. Therefore, it speeds up your website by compressing your images.

You can even generate WebP versions of your images with the Bulk Optimizer, and deliver them to supported browsers.

The plugin comes with a free and a premium version.

The premium plan is a game-changer, offering five times more optimization compared to the free version. With this plan, you’ll be able to automatically convert your images to WebP/AVIF, compress PDF files, add watermarks to your images, optimize Google Fonts, cache your pages, and take your website’s speed to the next level.

There are three premium plans to choose from:

• The Standard plan for $7 a month
• The Growth plan for $15 a month
• The Infinite plan for $25 a month

Each plan varies in terms of the number of websites on which you can use the premium version, available bandwidth, and CDN delivery enhancements.

Even though the premium plan is an upgrade, the free version is still effective and gets the job done. But if you’re looking to take your website’s speed and performance to the next level, the premium plan is definitely worth considering.

Why you should use WebP image formats

According to Google Developers, WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. You can reduce the size even further by using lossy WebP—those are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at an equivalent SSIM quality index.

What that means is that by using WebP, webmasters and web developers can generate smaller, richer images that speed up the web.

How to set up EWWW Image Optimizer

To use EWWW Image Optimize effectively, we’ll follow these easy steps. But before we start, make sure to create a backup of your website in case anything goes wrong.

Installation

First of all, go to your WordPress admin area. Then, navigate to Plugins » Add New » Search Plugins… » Type “EWWW Image Optimizer” » Install now.

After you’ve installed EWWW Image Optimizer, Activate the plugin.

It’ll automatically open a wizard that’ll walk you through some of the settings but you can also set everything by yourself.

If you click on “I know what I’m doing, leave me alone!”, you’ll need to go to the Plugin section where you need to open Settings of EWWW Image Optimizer.

You’ll be taken to the Basic settings in the easy mode where you’ll have a few options.

Basic settings for decreasing the image size

1. Remove all Metadata

First of all, you want to tick off Remove Metadata. This strips off all metadata.

Simply removing the metadata will reduce the image size, but will not change the quality of the images.

2. WebP Conversion

Secondly, scroll down to WebP Conversion and check it off.

If you are not using Cloudflare, you’ll see an option Insert Rewrite Rules under WebP Delivery Method.

The red PNG icon will turn into a green WEBP one if it was successful.

As an alternative, you have the option of using the JS WebP Rewriting or Picture WebP Rewriting methods for WebP delivery. These work, but a little more slowly than the .htaccess approach.

If you are using Cloudflare, you’ll have the option to use either JS WebP or Picture WebP rewriting to prevent broken images on older browsers.

Check off JS WebP Rewriting.

3. Resize Uploaded Images

Another setting you might want to take a look at is Resize Images.

WordPress, your theme, and other plugins generate different versions of images with various sizes. You can check it out in the Resize tab if you have ludicrous mode enabled.

I, for example, know that I am using 768-width pictures in my articles and homepage. As a result, I set it to this number. You might want to implement a similar strategy when considering these parameters.

To sum it up, this setting basically resizes all of the images that are wider or taller than these values to the set values.

Take your image compression to the next level

1. Enable Ludicrous Mode

By enabling Ludicrous Mode, you’ll have a chance to work with more advanced settings.

A notable setting for even better compression can be found in the Advanced tab.

2. Adjust JPG & WebP Quality Level

Scroll down and set JPG Quality Level and WebP Quality Level to your desired number. The lower the number, the lower the image size (but also the quality). You’ll want to balance it out according to your content and how much quality you are willing to sacrifice.

On this website, we’re using 85 for both because the text needs to be clear enough since this is a website with tutorials.

However, my other website is picture-heavy with no need for such quality, so we set the WebP Quality Level to 50. You can check the quality of the pictures in the article to see how it looks.

As you can see, it compressed the original picture by 44.7% and is serving the 52.2 KB version instead.

3. Automatically Convert PNG to JPG

Another setting to turn on is located in Convert » PNG to JPG Conversion.

JPG/JPEG files are smaller in size in comparison to PNG files. But as it states, it’s not a lossless conversion, so you’ll be sacrificing a bit of quality.

Bulk optimization

The free version can optimize all of your existing images but you’ll have to go to the Basic tab and either click on Bulk Optimizer in the right upper corner or next to the text describing Resize Image/WebP Conversion.

You’ll be taken to the Bulk Optimize section where you’ll click on Scan for unoptimized images.

The scanner will start automatically and show you how many images you can optimize.

Press Optimize images and it’ll automatically start optimizing your images.

It will take quite a while if you have a lot of images uploaded.

Testing whether the WebP is served

To check whether it’s serving the WebP images properly, open some of your articles with pictures and right-click on the image, and copy the image address. Open a new window and paste, then press Enter.

It should show you a .webp at the end of the image address.

In this example, the website serves the WebP version of the picture, so it’s working well.

Lazy Load

Lazy Load reduces both the actual and perceived loading times of the website by only loading images when they are about to enter the viewport.

To turn Lazy Load in EWWW Image Optimizer, go to Basic » Lazy Load. Tick off both Improve actual and perceived loading time and Automatic Scaling and test it on both phone and a PC.

All information regarding Lazy Load can be found in the documentation on EWWW IO’s official website.

Conclusion

EWWW Image Optimizer is one of the best plugins you can use to speed up your website by compressing your images and serving WebP images when applicable. This results in faster loading times and a better user experience for visitors.

Additionally, the plugin is user-friendly and easy to set up, making it a great option for both beginners and advanced users.

If you have any questions about the plugin, let us know in the comments below.

The post How to use EWWW Image Optimizer (Quick & Easy) appeared first on Geeky GF.