What's a slug?
Several Google searches for this question lately, so let's have a look at this particularly odd bit of WordPress jargon. "Slug" refers to the part of the URL used to point to an individual post, a category archive or a tag archive. This post's title is "What's a slug?" but its slug is whats-a-slug: WordPress automatically makes the post title into a URL-friendly version by removing punctuation and special characters, and replacing spaces with dashes.
Changing the slug
You can manually edit slugs: for individual posts, you need to edit the permalink; for categories and tags, you can just "quick edit" and change the slug. If, for example, you've decided your post needs a particularly long and rambling title, but want something snappier for the URL because that's better for your SEO, then change the slug before you publish the post. Skipping punctuation, turning "we'll" into "well" and "I'll" into "ill", can make for some odd-sounding URLs too, so you might consider rewriting the default version.
But do it before you publish. As soon as you hit publish, WordPress republishes your RSS feed, and notifies pinging services and search engines of your new post. If you change the slug a couple of minutes later, you run the risk of bringing people to a page that no longer exists.
Before publication, the slug is automatically generated from your post title: if you edit the title, the slug will change automatically. After publication, you can edit the title but the slug will not be changed: if you really want to change it, you'll need to do that separately. So if there's a typo in the title, best and easiest to just correct that and leave the slug alone.
But why "slug"?!
It's nothing to do with slimy molluscs that eat the broccoli in my garden. The term is taken from the newspaper industry, where it refers to
a short phrase or title used to indicate the story content of newspaper or magazine copy,
or the line of type carrying this information.
Tags: permalinks, slug
Posted by Sue on May 17, 2009 in WordPress.
It's getting ever ever so clever isn't it...
sigh.
You did not answer the question, what's a slug?
I just downloaded a plug-in that requires me to enter the page slug but your article did not help me at all identify what the page slug is.
well, Jordy, I'm very sorry you feel like that.
Maybe this will make it clearer:
the page slug is the bit of the URL that is unique to that page: e.g.
http://blogmum.com/contact/
If the above is the URL in question, the slug is "contact".
If that's still not clear, paste the URL you're asking about here and we'll take a look.
Am I the only one or does the author not tell us how to change the slug?
Click "quick edit". Edit what's in the "slug" form field. Save. Easy
Hi Sue... thanks for answering my question so clearly and succinctly. I'm pretty surprised at the other two comments here that couldn't follow your directions. Happy to have found someone who answers these questions in language I can follow as I struggle to design my site and know what all those boxes are.