All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

I've been trying to figure out how to get Drupal (the CMS that this site uses) to have more meaningful links & URLs. The default is to be something like “?q=node/2”... ok, so that doesn't tell me what could possibly be there... as compared to something more like “node/The_Joys_of_Compressed_Files_and_Soft_Links” we could guess as to the contents of that blog post :)

Does anybody have any idea what the technical term for this might be? I have no clue & once I find the answer I'm looking for & implement it, I'll probably forget what it's called again.

Having previously setup WordPress I knew that it had these nifty descriptive links as an option. Unfortunately I've repurposed the computer that test install was on so I wasn't able to easily find out this information. I downloaded a copy of the latest version of WordPress, installed it on my home test server, & went into the configuration area. After fumbling around on a bunch of the setting tabs I finally discovered what I was after.

Customize Permalink Structure Common options:

• Default » http://server/wordpress/?p=123
• Date and name based » http://server/wordpress/2006/08/28/sample-post/
• Numeric » http://server/wordpress/archives/123
• Custom, specify below

Ok, now we're getting somewhere... See the 2nd option? The Date & name based... That's the option I'm wanting. So now I can head to my favorite search engine & Google it - "drupal permalink"... And as usual, one of the first entries works - Drupal 4.7: Primary Links and the Menu System | Lullabot.

Now I just need to figure out a way to get this stuff a bit more automated... Computers are supposed to automagically make things happen.