Slug Generator for CMS: WordPress, Webflow, Ghost
Every CMS has its own interface for setting and managing URL slugs, and each has its own quirks — auto-generation logic, character handling, and the degree to which you can override defaults. This platform-by-platform guide shows you exactly where to find and set slugs in WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Shopify, and Squarespace, and how to integrate a slug generator into your CMS workflow for consistently optimized URLs.
WordPress: Slugs, Permalinks, and SEO Plugins
WordPress has one of the most configurable URL slug systems of any CMS, but its flexibility also means there are multiple places where slug settings interact — and conflicts between them are common. The global permalink structure is set in Settings > Permalinks. For SEO-optimized URLs, choose the Post name option, which produces URLs like example.com/your-post-slug without date or category prefixes. The Date and name and Month and name options add unnecessary date segments to every URL. The Plain and Numeric options produce non-descriptive URLs that should never be used for public-facing sites. Individual post slugs are set in the post editor. In the block editor (Gutenberg), click on the document settings sidebar and look for the URL section. The auto-generated slug is created from the post title when you first save a draft. Edit this field before publishing to set your optimized slug. Once a post is published, WordPress warns you that changing the slug will update the URL — use the redirect workflow discussed elsewhere in this guide. Category and tag slugs are set when creating or editing the taxonomy term under the Name field in Posts > Categories or Posts > Tags. The Slug field below the Name field is where you enter the category URL segment. Set this to a clean, lowercase, hyphenated category name before the category is published and linked to from other pages. SEO plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO add additional slug analysis — they check whether the slug contains the target keyword and flag slugs that appear to be auto-generated or keyword-stuffed. Using these plugins alongside a slug generator ensures your slugs meet both technical and keyword criteria. Multisite WordPress networks have per-site URL configurations. Each site in the network has its own permalink structure and slug settings, managed independently in each site's Settings > Permalinks.
Webflow: Page and CMS Slugs
Webflow handles slugs differently for static pages and CMS collection pages, and the configuration is accessible through the Designer interface. For static pages, the slug is set in the Page Settings panel — click the gear icon on any page in the Pages panel to access it. The Slug field under SEO Settings accepts a custom slug. Webflow does not auto-generate slugs from page names, so you must enter the slug manually. Use the slug generator to create an optimized version of the page title and paste it here. For CMS collection items — blog posts, products, team members, or any custom collection — the slug is determined by a Slug field in your Collection Schema. When setting up the collection, Webflow creates a Slug field automatically and binds it to the item's Name field by default, generating a slug from the item name. You can override this for each item by editing the Slug field directly in the Collection editor. To edit a CMS item's slug in Webflow: open the CMS panel, find the item, click to edit it, and look for the Slug field at the bottom of the item settings. The field accepts plain text slugs — enter your optimized slug without a leading slash. Webflow normalizes slugs to lowercase and replaces spaces with hyphens automatically, but it does not remove stopwords or optimize for keywords. Use the slug generator to prepare your optimized slug before pasting it into Webflow's Slug field. For published Webflow sites, changing a CMS item slug without a redirect causes a 404 for the old URL. Webflow does not automatically create redirects for slug changes. Use Webflow's Project Settings > SEO > Redirects to add a 301 redirect from the old path to the new one after changing a published item's slug.
Ghost: Automatically Optimized Slugs
Ghost is a headless CMS and blogging platform that has strong slug defaults out of the box. Understanding where Ghost auto-optimizes and where it falls short helps you produce consistently excellent slugs. Ghost auto-generates a URL slug from the post title when you create a new post. The auto-generation process converts to lowercase, replaces spaces with hyphens, and removes most special characters. For most English blog post titles, Ghost's auto-generated slug is already a reasonable starting point. To view and edit the auto-generated slug in Ghost, click the Settings icon in the post editor (the gear icon in the top right) and look for the URL field under the Post Settings panel. Edit the slug here before publishing. Ghost does not remove stopwords from auto-generated slugs. A title like The Complete Guide to URL Slugs produces the slug the-complete-guide-to-url-slugs in Ghost. Use the slug generator to get a stopword-stripped, more concise version — complete-guide-url-slugs — and paste it into Ghost's URL field. Ghost handles Unicode reasonably well for Latin-extended characters, converting accented letters to their ASCII equivalents in auto-generated slugs. For CJK or non-Latin content, Ghost may produce slugs that are entirely stripped of characters, leaving only hyphens. In these cases, you need to manually enter a transliterated slug. Ghost supports slug changes on published posts. When you change a slug on a published post, Ghost automatically creates an internal redirect from the old URL to the new one — a useful safety net that WordPress does not provide by default. The redirect is maintained as long as the post exists.
Shopify and Squarespace Slug Workflows
Shopify and Squarespace both have their own slug management interfaces, and each has limitations compared to more developer-friendly platforms. Shopify calls page URLs handles. A product's URL handle is set in the product editor under the Search Engine Listing section at the bottom of the page. Click Edit Website SEO to expand this section and you will see the URL and Handle field. The handle is the slug portion of the product URL: example.myshopify.com/products/[handle]. Shopify auto-generates handles from product titles, converting to lowercase and replacing spaces with hyphens. Like Ghost, it does not remove stopwords. Paste your slug generator output into the handle field to override the auto-generated version. Note that changing a Shopify handle does not automatically create a redirect — go to Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects to manually add the 301 from the old handle to the new one. For Shopify blog posts (in the Blog Posts section), the URL handle follows the same pattern. Collection pages also have handles, configured in the Collections editor. Squarespace has limited slug customization compared to other platforms. For blog posts, the URL slug is available in the Blog Post editor under Post Options. Squarespace auto-generates a slug from the title and allows you to override it. For standard pages, the URL is set in the Page Settings panel under the Navigation tab. Squarespace does not auto-create 301 redirects when you change a page URL. You must manually add redirects in Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings using Squarespace's redirect syntax: /old-slug -> /new-slug 301. For all platforms, the recommended workflow is the same: use the slug generator to create an optimized slug from your title before creating the content, enter the slug at draft creation (before publishing), and avoid changing slugs on published pages unless necessary.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does WordPress automatically create 301 redirects when I change a post slug?
- WordPress does not automatically create 301 redirects when you change a post slug by default. If you change a published post's slug and a visitor or crawler requests the old URL, they will receive a 404 error. To automatically create redirects for slug changes in WordPress, install a redirect management plugin like Redirection or use the redirect feature in Rank Math or Yoast SEO Premium. These plugins detect when a post URL changes and automatically create a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Always verify the redirect is active after a slug change.
- Can Webflow CMS auto-generate SEO-optimized slugs?
- Webflow auto-generates slugs from CMS item names using basic formatting rules: lowercase and hyphens. However, it does not remove stopwords or perform keyword optimization. For a content team publishing CMS items frequently, the most efficient workflow is to use a slug generator externally to produce the optimized slug and then paste it into the Webflow CMS item's Slug field before publishing. Webflow's Designer API also allows programmatic CMS item creation with custom slug values if you need to automate slug generation at scale.
- Why does Shopify use the term 'handle' instead of 'slug'?
- Shopify uses the term handle as its internal terminology for what is functionally equivalent to a URL slug — the URL-safe, lowercase, hyphenated identifier for a product, collection, page, or blog post. The term comes from Shopify's Liquid templating language, where you reference objects by their handle: product.handle, page.handle. Functionally, handles follow the same rules as URL slugs: lowercase, hyphens between words, no special characters, unique within their resource type. When Shopify documentation refers to a handle, treat it as a slug for all practical SEO purposes.