Clean URLs and Why They Matter

SEO & Feeds

Compare these two links to the same article:

  • /blog/index.php?p=42&cat=3
  • /blog/seo-and-feeds/clean-urls-and-why-they-matter/

The second tells a reader (and a search engine) exactly what the page is before they even open it. Nano CMS only ever produces the second kind.

How it works

A small set of mod_rewrite rules in .htaccess maps friendly paths to the underlying PHP. The structure is predictable:

/blog/                                  → the homepage
/blog/<category>/                       → a category archive
/blog/<category>/<post-slug>/           → a single post

No query strings, no file extensions, no ?id= noise.

Why it matters

  • Readers trust and remember descriptive URLs, so they click and share them more.
  • Search engines treat the words in a URL as a (small) ranking and relevance signal.
  • They're stable. The slug is yours; it won't change because a database id did.

The slug comes straight from your post's frontmatter, so you're always in control of the address.