Every CMS auto-generates a URL slug when you create a post or product. The default result is often good but rarely optimal — WordPress includes stop words, Shopify uses your product title verbatim, Ghost strips aggressively. Knowing how each platform generates slugs and where to override them saves time and prevents SEO mistakes.
WordPress: Auto-Generated Slugs and How to Edit Them
WordPress generates a slug from your post title automatically: it lowercases everything, replaces spaces with hyphens, and removes most special characters. It does not strip stop words by default — a title like "How to Sort a List Alphabetically" becomes how-to-sort-a-list-alphabetically.
To edit: in the block editor, click the post title area and look for the "Permalink" section in the right sidebar. Click the slug field and type your preferred slug. You can also edit directly in the URL field below the title in classic editor.
SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math add slug recommendations and alerts. Yoast will flag slugs containing stop words and suggest stripping them.
Gotcha: changing a published post slug breaks the old URL. WordPress does not automatically create a redirect. Install a redirect plugin (like Redirection) before changing slugs on live posts with backlinks.
Shopify: Product and Collection Slugs
Shopify generates slugs from product titles and prepends the resource type: /products/your-product-name for products, /collections/your-collection for collections, /blogs/news/your-post for blog posts.
To edit: in the product editor, scroll to the bottom of the page to "Search engine listing" → click "Edit website SEO" → edit the URL and handle field.
Shopify limits handles to 255 characters and removes most special characters. It keeps stop words by default. Shopify does create automatic 301 redirects when you change a URL handle on a published resource — which is an advantage over WordPress.
Gotcha: Shopify's /products/ and /collections/ prefix is always present. You cannot have a root-level product URL like /red-widget without custom development or a third-party app.
Ghost: Clean Slugs by Default
Ghost auto-generates slugs by converting the title to lowercase, replacing spaces with hyphens, and stripping all non-alphanumeric characters. It's more aggressive than WordPress — special characters and punctuation disappear immediately.
To edit: in the Ghost admin, open a post and click the settings icon (gear) → Post URL → edit the slug. Ghost does not auto-redirect on slug changes, so create redirects manually in your Ghost settings (Settings → Labs → Redirects for self-hosted) or through your hosting layer.
Best Practices Across All Platforms
Regardless of CMS: review the auto-generated slug before publishing. The platform's default output is a starting point, not a final answer. Remove unnecessary stop words, shorten overly long slugs to 3–5 words, and confirm the slug contains your target keyword.
Use a slug generator to preview the clean version of any title before committing to a URL. Paste the title, get the slug, compare with what your CMS generated, and update if needed.
Try the Free Tool
Convert any title to a clean URL slug — lowercase, hyphens, no special characters.
Generate Your Slug →Frequently Asked Questions
Does WordPress automatically redirect when you change a slug?
No — not by default. Changing a slug on a published post leaves the old URL returning a 404. Install a redirect plugin like 'Redirection' to create automatic 301 redirects when slugs change, or create them manually in your server configuration.
Does Shopify redirect automatically when you change a product handle?
Yes. Shopify creates a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one automatically when you change a product, collection, or page handle. You can see and manage these redirects under Online Store → Navigation → URL Redirects.
What is the difference between a WordPress slug and a permalink?
A slug is the unique identifier portion of a URL (/your-post-slug). A permalink is the full URL structure including the domain and any prefix (domain.com/category/your-post-slug). WordPress lets you set the permalink structure globally and edit individual slugs per post.
How do I change a slug in Ghost?
Open the post editor → click the settings gear icon (top right) → look for 'Post URL' → edit the slug field. Publish or update to save. Remember to create a redirect manually if the post was already published, as Ghost doesn't auto-redirect.
Should Shopify product URLs include the collection path?
Shopify generates two valid URLs for products in collections: /products/slug and /collections/collection-name/products/slug. Only use the /products/ version in canonical tags and links to avoid duplicate content. Shopify sets the canonical to /products/ by default.