User interface for creating URL redirects and URL aliases

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. 

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