Minutes before moving my thoughts blog to a new directory, I configured the pathauto module to automatically rename the path to each story to reflect its title rather than reading node/#. I had been meaning to do this for quite a while, and it turned out to be quite simple (and if I would ever get around to reading the Drupal Getting Started Guide I would already know about it).

To allow the renaming of the Paths, you have to enable the Paths module, which, being a core module, only entails going to Administer > Site building > Modules, clicking on a little check box, and then saving the changes. Having done this, every content type will have a new option that allows you to create a custom path.

Of course, manually entering the url every time you create a new post really isn’t a very good option if you post frequently. This calls for a module that you have to install on Drupal (still mentioned in the Getting Started Guide I believe - not sure as I haven’t read it yet . . .), specifically pathauto (and its dependency token). Once you have this installed, you can go to the URL Aliases page under Site building (this menu item should have appeared when you enabled path) and select the Automated alias settings link at the top of that section. Here you can change the settings to your liking, but take note of the Node path settings. In this section you can set a default path pattern, which originally will be content/[title-raw] but I have changed to [title-raw] on mine, so that only the title of the post is displayed in the path. Within this same section, it is also worth noting the option to “Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased”, which will generate aliases (paths) for all the content which you have currently have. The other options are worth a look, but are all self-explanatory and will differ from site to site.