#Pathauto
If you are developing for this module, have a look at pathauto.api.php.
##Description
The Pathauto module provides support functions for other modules to automatically generate aliases based on appropriate criteria, with a central settings path for site administrators.
Implementations are provided for core entity types: content, taxonomy terms, and users (including blogs and forum pages).
Pathauto also provides a way to delete large numbers of aliases. This feature is available at Administer > Configuration > Search and metadata > URL aliases > Delete aliases.
##Benefits
Besides making the page address more reflective of its content than "node/138", it's important to know that modern search engines give heavy weight to search terms which appear in a page's URL. By automatically using keywords based directly on the page content in the URL, relevant search engine hits for your page can be significantly enhanced.
##Notices
Pathauto just adds URL aliases to content, users, and taxonomy terms. Because it's an alias, the standard Drupal URL (for example node/123 or taxonomy/term/1) will still function as normal. If you have external links to your site pointing to standard Drupal URLs, or hardcoded links in a module, template, content or menu which point to standard Drupal URLs it will bypass the alias set by Pathauto.
There are reasons you might not want two URLs for the same content on your site. If this applies to you, please note that you will need to update any hard coded links in your content or blocks.
If you use the "system path" (i.e. node/10) for menu items and settings like that, Drupal will replace it with the url_alias.
For external links, you might want to consider the Path Redirect or Global Redirect modules, which allow you to set forwarding either per item or across the site to your aliased URLs.
###URLs (not) Getting Replaced With Aliases: Please bear in mind that only URLs passed through Drupal's Drupal's URL and Link APIs will be replaced with their aliases during page output. If a module or your template contains hardcoded links, such as 'href="node/$node->nid"', those won't get replaced with their corresponding aliases.
When the pattern for a content type is left blank, the default pattern will be used. But if the default pattern is also blank, Pathauto will be disabled for that content type.
##Credits:
The original module combined the functionality of Mike Ryan's autopath with Tommy Sundstrom's path_automatic.
Significant enhancements were contributed by jdmquin @ www.bcdems.net.
Matt England added the tracker support (tracker support has been removed in recent changes).
Other suggestions and patches contributed by the Drupal community.
Current maintainers:
- Dave Reid - http://www.davereid.net
- Greg Knaddison - http://www.knaddison.com
- Mike Ryan - http://mikeryan.name
- Frederik 'Freso' S. Olesen - http://freso.dk