ExpressionEngine Docs

# URL and Path Settings

Control Panel Location: `Settings > URL and Path Settings`

This section of the Control Panel allows you to define the URL and path settings of your site. If you are using Multiple Sites, note that these settings are per-site.

## Settings

### Default base URL

The value given to the `{base_url}` control panel variable. This is one of few tags than can be used in control panel settings, and it is highly recommended as it makes your site more portable.

Typically the value of the default path will be the URL to the folder containing your site’s index page. For example, if your index file is located at:

    https://example.com

Then the correct setting would be:

    https://example.com

### Default base path

The value given to the `{base_path}` control panel variable. This is one of few tags than can be used in control panel settings, and it is highly recommended as it makes your site more portable.

Typically the value of the default base path will be the full path to the folder containing your site’s index page, though you don’t want to go so deep in the directory structure that you can’t use the tag when defining any of your control panel paths.

### Website index page

This is the filename of your site’s “index” page. By default, this will be index.php, which is located in the base folder. You will only need to alter this setting if you have changed the filename. If you remove index.php from your urls, then you’ll want this field to be empty.

### Website root directory

The URL to the folder containing your site’s index page. For example, if you have defined your `{base_url}` as recommended and your index file is located at:

    https://example.com

Then the correct setting would be:

    {base_url}/index.php

### Control panel directory

The URL to your ExpressionEngine Control Panel. In most cases, this will be similar to:

    {base_url}/admin.php

### Themes directory

The URL to your “themes” folder. In most cases, this will be similar to:

    {base_url}/themes/

### Themes path

The server path to the “themes” folder. A server path often looks similar to:

    {base_path}themes/

Server paths will vary from server to server, so you should contact your Host or server admin if you are unsure of what your setting should be.

### Documentation directory

The full URL to location of the ExpressionEngine User Guide. This URL is used to create the User Guide link at the top of your Control Panel.

### Profile URL segment

When this word is encountered in your URL it will display your member profile area. The word you choose cannot be the name of an existing template group. The default value of this is “member”. That means that a URL like the following would trigger ExpressionEngine to display the member profile area:

    https://example.com/member/profile/

### Category URL segment

If you turn on the preceding preference, you must designate a special “indicator” word, which will be used in the URL whenever a category is intended. For example, URLs that indicate a category normally use the ID number like this by default:

    https://example.com/site/C12/

If you instead specify that the category URL title should be used, the URL will look like this:

    https://example.com/site/category/blogging/

In this example, the indicator is “category” and the category URL title is “blogging”.

The “indicator” word that you choose will become a ‘reserved’ word, which means that it cannot be used for Template Group or Template names.

### Category URL

This preference sets the system to generate category links with category URL IDs (e.g. `/C12/`) or titles.

In order to use this titles, you must use the channel= parameter in the following tags, and if you specify multiple channels, they must share identical Category Groups:

- {exp:channel:categories}
- {exp:channel:category_heading}
- {exp:channel:entries}

### URL title separator

When creating an entry in the PUBLISH page, if you do not manually enter a “URL Title” then the system will automatically create one based on the entry Title. This preference determines whether underscore characters (_) or dashes (-) should be used when automatically creating the URL Title.