Slug Generator User Guide

đź”— Slug Generator User Guide

Version: 1.0 | Category: Text Transformation | đź”— Launch Slug Generator

Slug Generator transforms titles, headings, and any text into clean, URL-friendly slugs. Whether you’re creating permalinks for blog posts, naming files, or generating database keys, this tool handles the tedious work of converting human-readable text into web-safe formats.

What Is a Slug?

A slug is the URL-friendly version of a title or name. When you write a blog post called “10 Tips for Better SEO in 2024”, the slug becomes 10-tips-for-better-seo-in-2024. Good slugs are lowercase, use hyphens between words, and contain only letters, numbers, and the separator character.

Slugs appear in many places beyond URLs. You’ll find them in file names, CSS class names, database identifiers, and API endpoints. Wherever you need a machine-readable version of human text, a slug fits the bill.

Quick Start

  1. Enter your text — Type or paste titles into the input box, one per line
  2. Choose your separator — Select hyphen, underscore, none, or a custom character
  3. Set your options — Enable transliteration, stopword removal, or other features as needed
  4. Click Generate Slugs — Your clean slugs appear instantly in the results area

Separator Options

The separator is the character that replaces spaces between words. Each option suits different use cases, so choose based on where your slugs will be used.

Hyphen (Default)

Hyphens are the standard choice for URLs. Search engines treat hyphens as word separators, which helps with SEO. Most content management systems, including WordPress, use hyphens by default.

Example: “How to Train Your Dragon” → how-to-train-your-dragon

Best for: Blog permalinks, page URLs, SEO-focused content

Underscore

Underscores work well in programming contexts where hyphens might cause issues. Many coding conventions prefer underscores for file names and variable names. However, search engines historically treated underscores as joiners rather than separators.

Example: “User Profile Settings” → user_profile_settings

Best for: File names, database fields, Python variables, configuration keys

None

Removing separators entirely creates concatenated strings. This option is useful for generating identifiers, hashtags, or compact codes where brevity matters more than readability.

Example: “New York City” → newyorkcity

Best for: Hashtags, short codes, compact identifiers

Custom

Sometimes you need a different separator entirely. The custom option lets you specify any single character. Common choices include dots for domain-style names or plus signs for certain URL parameters.

Example with dot: “Product Category Name” → product.category.name

Best for: Specific formatting requirements, legacy system compatibility

Processing Options

Beyond the separator, several options let you fine-tune how slugs are generated. Enable the ones that match your needs.

Transliterate Accents

This option converts accented characters to their ASCII equivalents. Enabled by default, it ensures your slugs work everywhere without encoding issues.

Examples:

  • “CafĂ© RenĂ©” → cafe-rene
  • “ZĂĽrich” → zurich
  • “Señor” → senor
  • “Björk” → bjork

The transliteration covers Latin Extended characters, German (ß → ss), Polish (ł → l), Czech (č → c), and many other European character sets. Common symbols like ampersands also convert to words (& → and).

Remove Numbers

Enable this option to strip all numeric characters from your slugs. This can be useful when numbers are irrelevant to the content or when you want purely alphabetic identifiers.

Example: “Top 10 Tips for 2024” → top-tips-for

Remove Stopwords

Stopwords are common words like “the”, “a”, “an”, “of”, and “with” that add little meaning to a slug. Removing them creates shorter, cleaner URLs that focus on the important keywords.

Example: “The Art of Writing for the Web” → art-writing-web

The stopword list includes articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, or, but), prepositions (in, on, at, to, for, of, with, by), and common auxiliary verbs. Use this option for SEO-focused URLs where brevity improves click-through rates.

Remove Duplicate Words

This option removes repeated words within a single slug. It’s particularly useful when processing text that might contain redundant phrasing.

Example: “Best Best Practices” → best-practices

Preserve Case

By default, all slugs are converted to lowercase. Enable this option to maintain the original capitalisation. While lowercase is standard for URLs, preserving case can be useful for certain identifiers or display purposes.

Example: “iPhone Pro Max” → iPhone-Pro-Max

Maximum Length

Setting a maximum length truncates slugs that exceed the specified character count. Importantly, the truncation happens at word boundaries rather than cutting words in half. This ensures your shortened slugs remain readable and meaningful.

Example with 20 character limit:

“The Complete Guide to Search Engine Optimisation” → the-complete-guide

Leave this set to 0 for no limit. Common limits include 50-60 characters for URLs (matching typical title tag lengths) or shorter limits for compact identifiers.

Input Methods

Slug Generator offers several ways to get your text into the tool.

Direct Typing

Simply type or paste text directly into the input area. Each line is processed as a separate item, so you can generate multiple slugs at once.

Paste Button

Click the Paste button to insert text from your clipboard. The content appends to any existing text rather than replacing it, which is useful when gathering text from multiple sources.

Load Button

Click Load to import a text file from your computer. The tool accepts .txt, .csv, .tsv, and .log files. For CSV files, ensure each title appears on its own line.

Output Options

After processing, you can view and export your results in two formats.

Slugs Only

The default view shows just the generated slugs, one per line. This format is ideal for copying directly into your CMS, spreadsheet, or code.

Original → Slug

Click this button to see a tab-separated view showing each original title alongside its generated slug. This format is perfect for review, documentation, or importing into spreadsheets where you need both values.

Preview Table

For batches of 50 items or fewer, a preview table appears below the output. This side-by-side comparison makes it easy to verify the transformations before copying or saving.

Copy and Save

Use the Copy button to send results to your clipboard, or Save to download as a text file. Both buttons work with whichever output view is currently active.

Common Use Cases

Blog Permalinks

Before publishing a post, run your title through Slug Generator to create a clean URL. Enable stopword removal for shorter URLs that focus on keywords.

Settings: Hyphen separator, transliterate on, remove stopwords on

File Naming

When saving documents, images, or downloads, consistent file names prevent issues across operating systems. Underscores often work better than hyphens for files that might be used in code.

Settings: Underscore separator, transliterate on

Database Keys

Creating identifiers for database records requires consistent, predictable formatting. Remove stopwords and limit length for compact, meaningful keys.

Settings: Underscore separator, remove stopwords on, max length 30-50

CSS Class Names

Generating class names from content labels ensures consistency across your stylesheets. Hyphens are the standard convention in CSS.

Settings: Hyphen separator, transliterate on

Hashtags

Creating hashtags from phrases requires removing all separators. Keep case preserved if the capitalisation aids readability.

Settings: None separator, preserve case on, remove stopwords on

API Endpoints

RESTful API endpoints follow URL conventions with hyphenated, lowercase paths. Remove stopwords for cleaner endpoint names.

Settings: Hyphen separator, remove stopwords on

Tips for Better Slugs

Keep Them Short

Shorter slugs are easier to remember, share, and type. Aim for 3-5 words when possible. Use the stopword removal option to trim unnecessary words automatically.

Include Keywords

For SEO purposes, ensure your primary keyword appears in the slug. If your title buries the keyword, consider rewriting it before generating the slug.

Avoid Dates in URLs

Unless date is essential to the content, remove years and dates from slugs. This keeps URLs evergreen and avoids the need to update them when refreshing old content.

Be Consistent

Use the same separator and options across your entire project. Consistency makes your URLs predictable and professional.

Batch Processing

Slug Generator excels at processing large batches. Simply paste a list of titles—one per line—and process them all at once. The preview table helps you verify results before exporting.

For very large batches, use the Load button to import a text file. After processing, Save the results to a file for use in your CMS import or database update script.

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Need help? Contact us with questions or feature requests.