How To Add URL Patterns Using PathAuto

“The Pathauto module automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias” - Drupal.org

Considered as one of the best practices for SEO, it is essential that your Uniform Resource Locator aka URL assists any layman in locating your resources easily. A crucial element when preparing your website for SEO or better UX, it is often overlooked by organizations. URLs play a very crucial role in the ranking of your website.

Modern search engines give preference to URLs which are:

Short and crisp
Legible
No request parameters
No URL unsafe characters
Important keywords

By default, Drupal assigns URL of the format node/[node:nid] to content items, taxonomy/term/[term:tid] to taxonomy terms, and user/[user:uid] to the users. URL aliases can be added either while creating the content items or by adding URL alias manually for each system Path using

Manage → Configuration → Search and metadata → URL aliases.

This built-in functionality works due to the Path module which comes with Drupal core.

Often you will come across one of the two issues when following URL practices:

Content items are added without adding proper URL alias.
Content publisher (who write and publish content) lacks proper knowledge of SEO and more importantly SEO friendly URLs.

Pre-Requisites

It requires the following modules to be pre-installed and enabled:

Token
CTools (for Drupal 8 onwards)

Downloading and Installing Pathauto

It can be downloaded and installed just like any other module in Drupal. Any of the four methods below can be followed to install Pathauto.

Using UI

Navigate to Manage → Extend → Install new module and enter the .tar.gz or .zip URL of the module and hit Install
Installing PathAuto using FTP
Once the downloader and installer are finished downloading, click on “Enable newly added modules”.
Wait for the installer to finish downloading and installing
Find Pathauto in the list of modules, select it and click on Install.
Enabling the module
For rest of the methods, first, navigate to the root directory of your Drupal site, $ cd /var/www/html/drupal-8.4.4

Using Composer

Add Pathauto package using composer

$ composer require "drupal/pathauto"
Enable the module by navigating to Manage → Extend, selecting Pathauto and click Install

Using Drush

Download and enable the module using Drush
$ drush dl pathauto
$ drush en pathauto -y

Using Drupal Console

Download and install the module using Drupal Console

$ drupal module:download pathauto
$ drupal module:install pathauto

Adding URL Patterns

Navigate to Manage → Configuration → Search and metadata, select the 'Patterns' tab and click on Add Pathauto pattern.

Adding Pathauto pattern; an example is shown in the image "article/[node:author]/[node:title]" — *Adding the Path pattern*

Select Pattern type to Content
Give a suitable Path pattern, eg: article/[node:author]/[node:title]. Tokens allow the creation of dynamic URL patterns, a full list can be viewed using Browse available tokens.
Provide a Label to this URL pattern, check Enabled and hit Save.
Similarly, URL patterns can be created for other content types, taxonomies and users.

Image showing the examples of Pathauto patterns like City/[term:name] — *Few examples of Pathauto patterns*

Creating Bulk URL Aliases

This feature of Pathauto allows creating URL aliases in bulk for already existing content, taxonomies, and users.

Generating URL aliases in bulk by selecting the "generate a URL alias for un-alaiased path only" — *Generating URL aliases in bulk*

Navigate to Manage → Configuration → Search and metadata and select the Bulk generate tab.
Select the entities for which you wish to generate URL aliases.
Select the appropriate paths for which URL aliases to generate.

Deleting Bulk URL Aliases

Similar to adding URL aliases in bulk, the module also allows deleting them. However, this is not recommended on a live site.

Deleting URL aliases in bulk by selecting "All alias" in Choose Aliases to delete; Selecting the "only delete automatically generated alias" in Delete options — Deleting URL aliases in bulk

Navigate to Manage → Configuration → Search and metadata and select the Delete aliases tab
Select the entities for which you want to delete URL aliases
Check Only delete automatically generated aliases to prevent deletion of manually created aliases and click on Delete aliases now

Tweaking Pathauto

Default settings of Pathauto are optimized for SEO friendly URLs and should suffice the needs of most of the users. Few of the settings that may be tweaked as per requirements:

Settings	Description	Default Value
Separator Character	The character used to separate words	-
Maximum alias length	The maximum length of URL alias generated	100
Maximum component length	The maximum length of individual components of alias, such as [node:title]	100
Strings to remove	Words to exclude from URL alias	a, an, as, at, before, but, by, for, from, is, in, into, like, of, off, on, onto, per, since, than, the, this, that, to, up, via, with
Punctuations	Special characters like a comma (,), semicolon (;), etc	Remove

Refer {your-drupal-site}/admin/config/search/path/settings for more settings.

To Sum Up

The module helps to automate the process of creating SEO friendly URL aliases, thereby improving the ranking index of your website. You may want to redirect your existing “system paths” to the newly created URL aliases. Redirect module can be used along with Pathauto to get the desired result.

In case of any query feel free to comment below.