# Shorter Post Slugs Without Stop Words

> Removes filler words such as "the", "and" or "how" from automatically created post slugs and caps their length, giving shorter, cleaner URLs.

- Type: PHP
- Runs: Run everywhere
- Category: [SEO](https://wpide.com/library/category/seo/)
- Tags: slugs, permalinks, urls
- Author: WPIDE Team
- Installs: 0
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Page: https://wpide.com/library/seo-clean-slugs/

## Code

```php
// Words removed from new slugs, and the maximum number of words kept.
$wpide_stop_words = array( 'a', 'an', 'and', 'are', 'as', 'at', 'be', 'by', 'for', 'from', 'how', 'in', 'into', 'is', 'it', 'of', 'on', 'or', 'our', 'the', 'this', 'that', 'to', 'what', 'when', 'why', 'with', 'you', 'your' );
$wpide_slug_max_words = 6;

add_filter( 'wp_insert_post_data', function ( $data, $postarr ) use ( $wpide_stop_words, $wpide_slug_max_words ) {
    if ( ! empty( $postarr['post_name'] ) || empty( $data['post_name'] ) || in_array( $data['post_status'], array( 'draft', 'auto-draft', 'pending', 'inherit', 'trash' ), true ) || 'attachment' === $data['post_type'] ) {
        return $data;
    }

    $words = explode( '-', $data['post_name'] );
    $kept  = array_values( array_diff( $words, $wpide_stop_words ) );

    if ( count( $kept ) < 2 ) {
        return $data;
    }

    $slug = implode( '-', array_slice( $kept, 0, $wpide_slug_max_words ) );

    if ( $slug !== $data['post_name'] ) {
        $data['post_name'] = wp_unique_post_slug( $slug, (int) ( $postarr['ID'] ?? 0 ), $data['post_status'], $data['post_type'], (int) $data['post_parent'] );
    }

    return $data;
}, 10, 2 );
```

## Notes

Only slugs WordPress creates from the title on first publish are changed; slugs you edit by hand are kept. Edit the word list for other languages.

## How to use it

Install the free WPIDE plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpide/), find "Shorter Post Slugs Without Stop Words" in its snippet library and add it in one click; or create a new PHP snippet in WPIDE (or any code snippets plugin) and paste the code above. More snippets: https://wpide.com/library/