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Pathauto Patterns

When to Use

Configure Pathauto when you need clean, SEO-friendly URL aliases generated automatically from content fields. Pathauto runs on every node/term/user save and applies your token-based pattern to produce the alias — no manual entry required.

Decision

Situation Choice Why
All content types use same URL structure Single global pattern Easier to maintain; apply at the entity level
Blog posts need /blog/title, events need /events/date/title Per-content-type patterns Different structures need separate pattern config
Site launch with existing content, no aliases Bulk generation One-time operation to retroactively create all aliases
Non-ASCII characters in titles (French, Arabic, etc.) Enable transliteration Prevents encoded characters in URLs; é → e
Alias already exists for a node Update action: Create new alias + delete old Paired with Redirect module, old alias becomes a redirect automatically

Pattern

Token syntax for common patterns:

/blog/[node:title]
/[node:content-type]/[node:title]
/news/[node:field_date:date:custom:Y]/[node:title]
/[term:vocabulary]/[term:name]
/user/[user:name]

Configure per-content-type pattern at admin/config/search/path/patterns/add:

  • Entity type: Content
  • Bundle: Article (or your content type)
  • Pattern: /blog/[node:title]

Bulk generate aliases for existing content at admin/config/search/path/bulk-update:

  • Select entity types to process
  • Choose update action: generate aliases for entities without one, or regenerate all
  • Run in batches — large sites should use Drush: drush pathauto:aliases-generate all node

Transliteration settings at admin/config/search/path/settings:

  • Enable "Transliterate prior to creating alias"
  • Set separator (default: -)
  • Enable "Reduce strings to letters and numbers" for maximum compatibility
  • Set maximum alias length (default: 100 characters)

Common Mistakes

  • Wrong: Leaving the default global pattern /content/[node:title] on a site with multiple content types → Right: Create per-content-type patterns immediately; the /content/ prefix is meaningless for SEO
  • Wrong: Using [node:nid] as part of the pattern on a public site → Right: IDs expose content volume and create guessable URLs; use semantic tokens like [node:title] or [node:field_slug]
  • Wrong: Generating aliases without the Redirect module active → Right: Install Redirect alongside Pathauto so alias changes automatically create 301 redirects; without it, old URLs return 404
  • Wrong: Pattern produces duplicate aliases (two nodes with same title get same alias) → Right: Enable "Avoid duplicate aliases" in Pathauto settings; it appends -0, -1 automatically
  • Wrong: Very long titles create URLs over 100 characters → Right: Set a maximum alias length and enable word-boundary truncation so aliases don't break mid-word

See Also