URL Slug Generator

WordPress

1. Open the post or page editor.
2. Click Edit next to the permalink under the title field.
3. Replace the auto-generated slug with the cleaned version from this tool.
4. Click OK and Update. WordPress automatically 301-redirects the old slug if you renamed.

Next.js

1. For static routes, name the file system path with the slug: pages/blog/best-running-shoes.js.
2. For dynamic routes, generate slug at build time in getStaticPaths() using a slugify utility.
3. Store slug in the CMS or markdown frontmatter; use it as the [slug].js parameter.
4. For renames, add the redirects: array in next.config.js to map old slugs to new.

Shopify

1. Open the product, collection, or page in admin.
2. Scroll to "Search engine listing preview" and click Edit.
3. Replace the URL handle with the cleaned slug from this tool.
4. Save. Shopify generates a 301 redirect automatically when you change a published handle.

Webflow

1. Open the CMS Collection settings or static page.
2. Edit the Slug field — Webflow auto-generates from name but you can override.
3. For CMS-driven pages, edit each item's Slug field individually.
4. Set up 301 redirects for old slugs in Project Settings > Hosting > 301 Redirects.

Ghost

1. Open the post editor.
2. Click the gear icon for Post Settings, then expand the URL field.
3. Replace the auto-generated slug with the cleaned version.
4. Save. Ghost automatically maintains the old URL as a redirect to the new slug for 30 days; for permanent redirects, use the routes.yaml file.

Slug contains uppercase letters

Cause: CMS auto-generates slug from title without lowercasing, creating /Best-Running-Shoes that some servers treat as different from /best-running-shoes.

Fix: Force lowercase in your slug generator. Add a 301 redirect from uppercase variant to lowercase canonical.

Special characters break URL

Cause: Apostrophes, ampersands, slashes, or quotation marks in titles get URL-encoded as %27, %26, etc., creating ugly broken-looking URLs.

Fix: Strip all non-alphanumeric characters except hyphens before generating the slug. This tool handles it automatically.

Underscores instead of hyphens

Cause: Slug generator inherited from filesystem-style naming uses underscores; Google treats these as word joiners not separators.

Fix: Replace underscores with hyphens. Add 301 redirect if old underscored URLs were already indexed.

Slug exceeds 100 characters

Cause: Auto-generation includes full title, taxonomy, date, and unique ID without truncation.

Fix: Limit slug to 60 characters. Strip stop words and avoid dates and taxonomy prefixes.

Duplicate slugs across pages

Cause: CMS auto-numbers duplicates as /post-name and /post-name-2 without warning, fragmenting topical authority.

Fix: Detect collisions before save. Append SKU or unique hash; redirect duplicate to canonical.

Slug changes after content update

Cause: Editor renames title, CMS regenerates slug, breaks all existing backlinks.

Fix: Lock slug after first save. Require admin override + automatic 301 redirect for any rename.

Unicode characters not normalized

Cause: café (NFD) and café (NFC) produce different URL bytes, causing duplicate-content issues.

Fix: Apply NFC normalization before saving slug. Standardize on either Unicode-preserved or transliterated mode.

Stop words inflating slug length

Cause: Default generator preserves "the", "and", "of" without stripping, producing 80-character slugs from 60-character titles.

Fix: Enable stop-word removal in the slug generator. Override only when readability genuinely suffers.