custom permalink author = 404

oops, one more thing, the author link to admin always works

Are you generating the author link using either…
the_author_posts_link();
or
the_author_link();

If the admin account is the one you’re trying to view the author page for, you may find it’s actually…

https://yoursite/author/admin/

Hi
yes, the admin link does work and is like you say (mysite/author/admin/), it’s the other authors on my site that don’t work – mysite/author/nameofauthor/ – they all produce a 404.
Debs

Ok, but as i said before… ??

How are you generating the links to the author pages?

Hi
I’ve installed a couple of different plugins that create user pages (I don’t have the skill to do this myself, so use plugins), just in case it was the first plugin that didn’t work – I have:

1. members list – https://www.ternstyle.us/products/plugins/wordpress/wordpress-members-plugin – this creates https://publishingacademy.com/members/ – you can see that I have some “members” – when you click through to (for example) Joe Gregory you get a 404

2. I also installed (to check if it was the previous plugin) – User Community – https://alkivia.org/plugins/community – which creates this page: https://publishingacademy.com/about/faculty-members/ – when you click to Joe Gregory again, you first get the user community part (which works) and then a link to the author profile, which doesn’t work – gives a 404 (click on “View This Author’s Posts”)

I’m sorry if I’m not telling you what you need to know, just point me in the right direction and I’ll tell you more!

Does that help?
thanks a bunch
Debs

Hi
I installed WP-Devel and have this extra info to share:

query_vars (Array, 1 element)
o
author_name (String, 10 characters ) joegregory
*
query_string (String, 22 characters ) author_name=joegregory
*
request (String, 17 characters ) author/joegregory
*
matched_rule (String, 17 characters ) author/([^/]+)/?$
*
matched_query (String, 22 characters ) author_name=joegregory
*
did_permalink (Boolean) TRUE

Which suggests the permalink thing is working? I think???? Which would mean it’s further along the chain – perhaps in author.php?
Debs

I also changed the theme back to default and I still get the error

You don’t need a plugin if you just want author pages that link to their posts..

You can plonk an author.php in your theme then create the link to those pages using one of the 2 functions i mentioned previously.

There’s a sample shown on the codex page here.
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Author_Templates#Sample_Template_File

Ok, I checked, and from the posts pages where the author link also appears (for example: https://publishingacademy.com/authors/get-book-ideas/creativity-what-about-textbooks-academic-books at the bottom)

The code in the theme uses: the_author_posts_link();

Does that help in diagnosing why the link doesn’t work? Anything else I can tell you?

thanks for trying to help me with this

Hi
I have also turned off plugins one by one to see if that fixed it and it didn’t
Debs

Can i see the code from the file you have the code placed in…

Plonk it in a pastebin, then post the link here.
https://wordpress.pastebin.com/

thanks, I’ve done that

oops, forgot to post the link
https://wordpress.pastebin.com/m7360cf73

Hi
I just added a new user – and only used a firstname – that user’s page works and does NOT create a 404 – but I can’t work out why the other links don’t work – it seems as if they should.
Debs

Hi
I have worked out that the profile pages work IF the author’s user_nicename in wp_users is changed to not include a space. So does anyone know of a fix for this, without me having to poke the database by hand for each user?
Debs