Slug

What Is a Slug?

A slug is a URL-safe string that WordPress generates from a title. Technically, WordPress uses the sanitize_title() function to convert any title into a slug by lowercasing it, replacing spaces with dashes, removing special characters, and stripping accents.

For example:

• Title: "How to Install WordPress" → Slug: how-to-install-wordpress
• Title: "Best Plugins for 2026!" → Slug: best-plugins-for-2026
• Title: "What Is SEO?" → Slug: what-is-seo

A slug only contains lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes. No spaces, no special characters, no uppercase.

The slug becomes part of your permalink — the full URL. If your permalink structure is set to "Post name" (/%postname%/), the slug is essentially the URL of your content.

Slugs in Practice

WordPress auto-generates a slug from your title when you create a post or page. But you can (and should) edit it manually to make it shorter and more focused.

To edit a slug: in the block editor, click the URL field in the post settings sidebar. A dialog appears where you can type a custom slug.

Best practices for slugs:

• Keep them short — best-hosting is better than the-best-wordpress-hosting-providers-for-beginners-in-2026
• Include your target keyword — wordpress-seo-tips not some-helpful-stuff
• Use dashes, not underscores — Google treats dashes as word separators
• Don't include dates or filler words ("the," "a," "and")
• Never change a slug after publishing (unless you set up a redirect)

Slugs aren't just for posts — categories, tags, and author pages also have slugs that form their archive URLs.

Why It Matters

Your slug directly affects SEO and click-through rates. A clean, keyword-rich slug helps search engines understand your content and makes links more clickable in search results. See our SEO tips guide and SEO checklist for more URL optimization advice.

Sources: WordPress.org — Customize Permalinks, Developer.WordPress.org — get_permalink()