Wednesday, 15th April 2009Setting up SEO-friendly URLs in Drupal 6

We went over many topics at the Drupal 101 Workshop on Thursday April 9th 2009, I will be posting some notes here. For a more complete SEO-friendly setup for your site, download the SEO Checklist module http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist and follow the instructions

Module requirements

NOTE: If you have downloaded the Acquia Drupal distribution from http://acquia.com/downloads then these are already included, otherwise:

1. Token - http://drupal.org/project/token
2. Pathauto - http://drupal.org/project/pathauto
3. Path - included in the core Drupal distribution

Configuration

NOTE: These are just how I set things up, obviously tailor to your individual needs/preferences!

1. Enable the above modules in Site building->Modules (/admin/build/modules from your site root)
2. Go to Site building->URL aliases->Automatic alias settings (/admin/build/path/pathauto from your site root)
3. I set General settings->Maximum number of objects to alias in a bulk update to something representing the current number of nodes on your site or higher - the default is quite low so you can often forget this. I set it to 9999 but this could be trouble if done on a live site so you would need to do it in smaller batches in that particular use case
4. I set Blog path settings->Pattern for blog page paths to 'blog/[user-raw]' rather than 'blogs/[user-raw]'
5. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for blogs that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
6. I set Node path settings->Default path pattern to '[title-raw]' rather than 'content/[title-raw]'
7. I set Node path settings->Pattern for all Blog entry paths to 'blog/[author-name-raw]/[yyyy]/[mm]/[dd]/[title-raw]'
8. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
9. I set Taxonomy term path settings->Default path pattern to '[vocab-raw]/[catpath-raw]' rather than 'category/[vocab-raw]/[catpath-raw]'
10. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for terms that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
11. I set User-tracker path settings->Pattern for user account page paths to 'member/[user-raw]/track' rather than 'users/[user-raw]/track'
12. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for user-tracker paths that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
13. I set User path settings->Pattern for user account page paths to 'member/[user-raw]' rather than 'users/[user-raw]'
14. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for users that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
15. When you're ready, click Save configuration and watch the magic happen!

tags: Drupal Planetdrupalseourlhowtotokenpathautopathprojectbrightonblogssussexdigital