How do I change the URL for the wordpress author archive page?

Question

Instead of www.example.com/author/xyz, I want to use www.example.com/artist/xyz.

I was hoping it was as easy as copying author.php to artist.php in my theme directory, but no such luck. Where does wordpress handle the special processing for the author archive pages?

.htaccess rewriting is another option, but I wasn't able to get anything to work with the existing wordpress rewrite rules.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Place this code in the functions.php of your theme:

add_filter(
    'init',
    create_function(
        '$a',
        'global $wp_rewrite;
        $wp_rewrite->author_base = "artist";
        $wp_rewrite->flush_rules();'
    )
);