WP Author Page Error & GA PV Results Question

If we edit Author Page in db, will it mess up Author's PVs in GA?

[Spacecowgirl]

Hi there! I have a riddle.

We are a high volume content publisher. Our biz model is PVs. Our Authors are set up as custom dimensions in GA to pull data on articles written in our WP website.

ISSUE: They misspelled the name of an author on her Author Page and we want to correct it (she has a degree of authority and it's important we make the edit -- it will be a one-letter fix. Literally adding a "T" to the end of her name).

If we update her user name in the database, will we need to make any changes to her connected GA account to ensure her results do not get affected by this?

So then...

Step 1: Update her name in the database
Step 2: Do we need to do anything to her Author Name in GA?

If anyone has run into similar problems and can share any wisdom or insights gleaned in the process, please share.

Sidenote on step 1: There are also plugins to change user name in WP, but I think the db route would be the best path, with an experienced developer.

[lammert]

I can't comment directly on the GA implications, but:

Fixing issues directly in the WP database is a risky endeavor. Their database architecture doesn't use foreign keys to link contents of different tables and do all matches based on field values. That may cause damage way beyond the nuisance of a small typo in an author's name. Also, if you use WP-integrated object or query caching, the caching plugin may not see the database update and keep inconsistent data in their cache. If that inconsistent data is used in further INSERT/UPDATE queries to the database, the problems may be very difficult to repair.

[roshanwebexpert]

I feel changing your author name in DB, will not affect anything to your GA tracking code, because Google does not link to channel name with its generated code. Channel names within the GA can only help us to understand the traffic like from which channel we are getting the data. Else, whenever you will add/edit any channel, Google produce the standard code for that specific channel which must be placed over the pages which you want to track.

[Spacecowgirl]

Awesome @iammer thank you so much for the words of caution, I'm going to share your message with the team .. do you have any other recs for a safer alternative to changing an author name in WP?

BTW, I got the original information from this article [ [hostinger.com...] ] (see #2).

and @roshanwebexpert excellent insights, that is reassuring, I will also share with the team!