Disable Author Archives

79 Quality Score

Active Installs

18/30

With roughly 10,000 active installs, this is a niche plugin with a modest user base, reflecting its narrow use case rather than broad appeal.

Update Freshness

25/25

The plugin was last updated in May 2026 and is tested up to WordPress 7.0, which is exceptional and signals an actively maintained codebase.

User Rating

13/15

The user rating of 88 out of 100 from 7 ratings is solid but based on a very small sample, so it should be read as suggestive rather than statistically strong.

Support Health

8/15

Zero support threads, both open and resolved, means there is no public track record of how the developer handles user issues, which is a mild concern given the small community.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Compatibility scores a perfect 100, with tested support through WordPress 7.0 and a minimum requirement of just 2.9, meaning it will work on virtually any installation.

Scores higher than 69% of indexed plugins

About

Disable Author Archives completely removes author archives and makes the web server return status code 404 ('Not Found') instead.

Active Installs 10k+

Rating ★★★★ 4.4/5

Last Updated 2026-08-21 4:42am GMT

Requires WordPress 2.9+

Tested Up To 7.1

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

Disable Author Archives completely deactivates WordPress author archive pages, forcing the server to return a 404 Not Found response when anyone visits an author URL. This prevents author profile listings, their posts, and any associated metadata from being publicly accessible. It is a narrow, single-purpose tool that does one thing and does it at the server response level rather than through redirects.

Who It's For

This plugin is best suited for sites that need to hide contributor identities, such as corporate sites with staff privacy requirements, membership platforms protecting user data, and small blogs that simply do not want public author pages. It also helps news publications and content sites reduce duplicate content concerns caused by author-sorted archives showing up in search engines.

Who Should Skip It

Single-author blogs or sites that actively rely on author pages for community building, bio displays, or E-E-A-T signals should not use this plugin, since removing author archives can hurt content discoverability and search trust signals. Anyone who simply wants to noindex or tweak the appearance of author pages should look at SEO plugins instead, as a full 404 is a heavy-handed approach.

The Bottom Line

Disable Author Archives is a simple, well-maintained plugin that does exactly what it promises with a recent update and modern WordPress compatibility. The main concerns are its tiny user base and lack of any visible support activity, which makes it a slight trust-of-developer decision. If you need author archives gone and do not want to write custom code, this is a reasonable choice, but you should test your author URLs after activation to confirm the 404 behaviour matches your expectations.

Related Plugins

Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly) 84/100

Pick this instead if your priority is removing emoji-related scripts and inline styles for performance or GDPR compliance, which is a different cleanup goal.

Disable Everything 83/100

Choose this if you want a broad toolkit of WordPress feature toggles, including the ability to disable author archives, rather than a dedicated single-purpose plugin.

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Opt for this if your real frustration is with the block-based widget editor and you need to restore the classic widget interface, a completely different problem space.

Broken Link Checker 91/100

Consider this if your underlying concern is SEO hygiene and link management, since broken links and author archives both affect crawl quality.

Nested Pages 84/100

Pick this if you want to restructure your site's content hierarchy with drag-and-drop page management, which addresses a different aspect of site organization.