URL Patterns

A page group’s URL pattern decides the address of each generated page. It is set on the group’s General page.

Pattern syntax

A pattern is a path with one {slug} placeholder:

• services/{slug} produces /services/new-york/, /services/london/
• products/detail/{slug} produces /products/detail/widget-pro/
• guides/{slug}-checklist produces /guides/seo-checklist/

The pattern must contain {slug} exactly once; saving one with none or with two fails. The placeholder is replaced by each row’s slug value and matches exactly one path segment, so a slug cannot contain a slash. Text before and after {slug} in the same segment is allowed.

Leading and trailing slashes are ignored: services/{slug} and /services/{slug}/ behave the same. Requests match with or without a trailing slash. Sitemap entries always end with one; a generated page’s canonical URL follows the trailing slash of the site’s permalink structure.

How a request is answered

Every published page group adds a WordPress rewrite rule for its pattern at the top of the rule list, ahead of WordPress’s own rules. When a request matches a group’s pattern, Rank:

1. takes the slug from the URL
2. looks the slug up in the group’s cached rows, source by source in order, while WordPress parses the request
3. if a row is found, renders the group’s base page with that row, applies the mappings, and points the page’s canonical link and og:url at the generated URL
4. if no row is found, parses the request again without the page group rules, before WordPress queries posts or picks a template, so WordPress serves whatever else owns that URL, or its own 404 with a 404 status and the theme’s 404 template

A generated page therefore takes precedence only for slugs that are in the data. A real page or post at the same path as a generated one is hidden behind it; every other URL the pattern happens to match keeps working.

Draft groups add no rule and answer nothing. A group whose data has not been loaded answers no URL either, so every request falls through to WordPress.

Generated URLs need pretty permalinks (Settings > Permalinks set to anything but Plain), because WordPress ignores rewrite rules otherwise. The rules are rebuilt on the first request after a page group is created, changed or deleted; wp sleek rank flush-rewrites rebuilds them at once. Deactivating Rank removes them (Deactivating).

A pattern of only {slug}

A new group starts with the pattern {slug}, which matches every single-segment URL on the site. Pages such as /about/ keep working unless their path is also a slug in the data, but every such request is first looked up in the group’s rows. Put the slug under a static path unless the group really owns the top level of the site.

Good practice

• Use a descriptive static path, such as services/{slug}, for both search engines and the rest of the site
• Keep slugs lowercase, hyphenated and URL-safe
• Do not let a pattern overlap existing pages whose paths could appear as slugs in your data; the generated page wins