I was looking at get_author_posts_url() which takes the user id as a param and returns a URL. It has an optional second parameter $author_nicename.

get_author_posts_url( $author_id, $author_nicename );

What does providing $author_nicename do exactly?

I was looking at get_author_posts_url() which takes the user id as a param and returns a URL. It has an optional second parameter $author_nicename.

get_author_posts_url( $author_id, $author_nicename );

What does providing $author_nicename do exactly?

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Share Improve this question asked Jun 13, 2019 at 9:45 Matthew Brown aka Lord MattMatthew Brown aka Lord Matt 1,06833 gold badges1313 silver badges3434 bronze badges

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Sorted by: Reset to default 2

Say that get_author_posts_url(1) return the following URL

https://example/author/admin/

Passing the $author_nicename will change this. So get_author_posts_url(1, 'foo') will result in

https://example/author/foo/

You can also check this in the source code of get_author_posts_url().

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So what does passing the second argument do? It changes the resulting URL. If you don't provide further mechanisms, this will probably result in invalid URLs.

Why is this provided? No idea.

Ok, so checking this file via Git blame turns out, get_author_posts_url() was previously called get_author_link() (this change happened on Aug 30, 2006). get_author_link() was added on Mar 19, 2004 and required the argument $author_nicename (though it had a fallback).

Why is this provided? Because in earlier times, you needed to pass the (correct) nicename for this to work.