Pathauto Patterns is a popular Drupal module for automatically generating human-readable and search engine-friendly URLs for a website’s content. Bobcares, as a part of our Drupal Software Development offers solutions to every query that comes our way.

Pathauto Patterns in Drupal

Pathauto is a popular Drupal module for automatically generating human-readable and search engine-friendly URLs (sometimes known as “clean URLs” or “pretty URLs”) for a website’s content. It lets us set patterns for different types of material, and when that content is created or updated, the module produces the URL depending on the pattern we specify.

The key benefit of utilizing Pathauto is that it generates URLs based on the title or other fields of the content, making them more meaningful and descriptive, which is good for SEO and user experience.

Working of Pathauto Patterns in Drupal

1. First, install and activate the Pathauto module on the Drupal website. We can achieve this by going to “Extend” in the Drupal administration menu, then finding and enabling the “Pathauto” module.

2. After we enable the Pathauto module, we must set the patterns for various content kinds. Navigate to “Configuration” > “Search and metadata” > “URL aliases” (or a location equivalent, depending on the Drupal version). The “Patterns” tab is located here, and it allows us to define custom patterns for various content kinds.

3. We can establish a default pattern for all content kinds or specific patterns for each one. Tokens, which are placeholders for specific data from the content, are frequently used in the patterns. For example, the token [node:title] denotes the title of a node (in Drupal, a content item).

4. Pathauto gives a list of possible tokens for use in patterns. These tokens indicate various content aspects such as title, author, date, and taxonomy terms.

5. After we’ve defined the patterns, we can use Pathauto’s “Bulk Update” feature to generate new URLs for existing content. This guarantees that all URLs follow the new patterns.

6. After we’ve established the patterns, create or change content to see how Pathauto produces URLs. Check the URLs to ensure they are what we expect, and make any required changes to the patterns.

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Conclusion

Pathauto patterns in Drupal can help us speed up the URL generation process while also improving the readability and SEO friendliness of our website’s URLs. It contributes to a better user experience and can have a favorable impact on search engine rankings.