Removing /author/ slug from URL gives 404

Question

After hours of searching and trying different functions, I've finally successfully removed the /author/ from all of our users profile URLs. So its just /username/

However, when new users register their profile URL's all give 404's. I can fix this by going into the permalinks screen and clicking save but we register lots of users and I cannot do this for each one.

This is the function I'm using... Any Ideas!?

Thanks!

    add_filter('author_rewrite_rules', 'no_author_base_rewrite_rules');
function no_author_base_rewrite_rules($author_rewrite) {
   global $wpdb;
   $author_rewrite = array();
   $authors = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT user_nicename AS nicename from $wpdb->users");   
   foreach($authors as $author) {
       $author_rewrite["({$author->nicename})/page/?([0-9]+)/?$"] = 'index.php?author_name=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]';
       $author_rewrite["({$author->nicename})/?$"] = 'index.php?author_name=$matches[1]';
   }  
   return $author_rewrite;
}

if( !is_admin() ) {
add_action('init', 'author_rewrite_so_22115103');
}

function author_rewrite_so_22115103() {
   global $wp_rewrite; 
   if( 'author' == $wp_rewrite->author_base ) $wp_rewrite->author_base = null;
}

Answer 1

You are just doing it wrong. Adding a per user rewrite rule will just bloat the rewrite "table" and slow down the URL parsing process. You need to come up with a generic rewrite rule which will work for all users, or write an alternative url parsing using the 'do_parse_request filter.

Your core problem is that your URL structure as it is now "collides" with the url structure of posts/categories/etc, and the best way is to just use a constant predictable prefix for your user urls maybe something like /user/{user login}/... otherwise, the only sane option in a site with many users is to do your own parsing.

Answer 2

author_rewrite_rules is only going to be invoked when WordPress needs to regenerate the rewrite rules. So you need to give WordPress a reason to do that. Saving on the permalinks page is one way. Another would be to hook into the user_register action, which is called right after a new user is created. Inside your handler function, call flush_rewrite_rules().

Answer 3

Also add this near the other similar two, in order to redirect the feeds as well:

$author_rewrite["({$author->nicename})/page/?([0-9]+)/?$"] = 'index.php?author_name=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]';