Understanding URLs, Aliases, Redirects, and Breadcrumbs

Mastering URLs, aliases, redirects, and breadcrumbs in Drupal can significantly enhance your website’s usability and SEO performance.

Author: Elena Talanker

Here are some core concepts to help you navigate and manage your Digital Commons website.  URLs, aliases, redirects, and breadcrumbs play a crucial role in enhancing both the user experience and website administration.

URLs

A URL is the address used to access resources on your website. In Drupal, URLs follow a structured format, often reflecting the website’s content hierarchy. Well-structured URLs can improve search engine optimization (SEO), making your content more discoverable.

Example: a blog post might have a URL like https://www.yoursite.org/blog/my-first-post.

Aliases

Defer to Drupal to Generate automatic URL alias that are user-friendly, customizable paths for your content. Search engines prefer URLs that include keywords related to the content. 

Example: By default, Drupal generates URLs that might be hard to read or remember, such as www.yoursite.org/node/123. An alias replaces this with a more meaningful URL, like www.yoursite.org/blog/my-first-post.

Redirects

Redirects are used to forward one URL to another. This is particularly useful when you change the URL of a page or delete a page and want to guide users and search engines to a new location. The most common type is a 301 redirect (permanent), which tells search engines that a page has moved permanently to a new URL. Or if you are looking to create a short URL to be used in a promotional campaign.

Example:  To have a short name for the page use Drupal to create a redirect with  helpful short name  www.yoursite.org/post1 to Drupal node www.yoursite.org/blog/my-first-post.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs help users understand their location within the site and navigate back to previous pages easily. Breadcrumbs are displayed at the top of a webpage and provide a hierarchical trail from the homepage to the current page. Page placement in the main menu structure identifies breadcrumbs trail.

Example: /blog/my-first-post breadcrumbs show users the path they have taken to reach a particular page.

By creating meaningful URLs, setting up user-friendly aliases, managing redirects effectively, and providing clear breadcrumbs, you can ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience for your visitors while maintaining the structural integrity of your site.