Working with page paths

Background

The address of a web page, referred to as its path or hyperlink or URL, plays a foundational role in visitor navigation. It conveys information about the page’s relationship to other site content. It also controls how a page shows in site breadcrumbs.

Drupal pages have unique internal paths such as /node/123. The same pages can also have user-friendly “URL aliases” like /about/visiting-faculty.

Automatically generated paths

The Drupal Kit generates automatic URL aliases from the page title. For example, if your page is titled “About Us,” the URL alias will be /about-us.

Customize a page path

Override the automatically generated path by deselecting “Generate automatic URL alias” the right sidebar of a page’s “Edit” interface and entering a custom URL alias:

Image showing URL alias form on edit/create page

  • Use hyphens to separate words instead of spaces (e.g., /contact-us, not /contact us).

  • Avoid capitalization (e.g., /visiting-faculty, not /Visiting-Faculty).

  • Be specific: use keywords from page content to make each link distinct.

  • Be succinct: use enough words to be specific, but no more.

  • Use path prefixes (e.g., /about/visiting-faculty) to provide navigational cues in the site breadcrumb. See Working with breadcrumbs.