Page Slug Guidelines

Page slugs (the text that appears in the URL after your domain name) play a big role in your website’s SEO, readability, and user experience. This guide outlines best practices to ensure your URLs are clean, descriptive, and optimised for both people and search engines.

#✅ Use Hyphens, Not Underscores

By default, NationBuilder auto-generates page slugs using underscores (_), but we strongly recommend replacing these with hyphens (-) for both readability and SEO.

Why it matters:

According to Search Engine Journal:

“Always use hyphens (-) and not underscores (_) because underscores cannot be seen when the URL is published as a bare link.”

Example: A link like example.com/te_reo_maori becomes visually confusing — the underscores are invisible in many contexts (such as social media or plain text):

Underscores in URLs can be hard to read
Underscores disappear when rendered as links, making them harder to read or interpret.

💬 Slug Best Practices

To ensure your slugs are useful, follow these tips:

| Rule | Example | |------|---------| | ✅ Use lowercase letters | /our-team, not /Our-Team | | ✅ Use hyphens (-) instead of spaces or underscores | /te-reo-maori, not /te_reo_maori or /te%20reo%20maori | | ✅ Keep it short and descriptive | /join, /about-us, /our-values | | ❌ Avoid unnecessary words | /our-organisation-mission-and-vision → better as /our-mission | | ❌ Avoid special characters or punctuation | No !, ?, &, etc. | | ✅ Match the page title or content where possible | Helps with clarity and search relevance |

🌐 NationBuilder & Macron Handling

Macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) are a critical part of te Reo Māori. However, NationBuilder does not support macrons in page slugs. When you create a page with a macron in the title, NationBuilder will automatically replace the character with an underscore.

Example: Creating a page titled Te Reo Māori generates the slug: /te_reo_m_ori

NationBuilder replaces any macron letter (and space) with an underscore.

After creating the page, manually edit the slug to remove underscores and replace macron-ised vowels with standard equivalents (ā → a, ē → e, etc.).

Recommended Slug: /te-reo-maori

We recommend replacing the 'ā' with 'a' and using hyphens in place of spaces.

✅ This makes the URL more readable, improves accessibility, and aligns with SEO best practices.

🔍 SEO & Accessibility Benefits

Using clear, human-readable slugs helps:

🧾 Summary Checklist

Before publishing a page, double-check your slug:

🙋 Need Help?

If you’re unsure how to name or edit a slug, we’re happy to review or assist. Creating clean, consistent URLs helps ensure your site remains easy to navigate, search-optimised, and professional across every platform.