Permalinks

Permalinks are the output path for your pages, posts, or collections. They allow you to structure the directories of your source code different from the directories in your output.

Front Matter

The simplest way to set a permalink is using front matter. You set the permalink variable in front matter to the output path you’d like.

For example, you might have a page on your site located at /my_pages/about-me.html and you want the output url to be /about/. In front matter of the page you would set:

---
permalink: /about/
---

Global

Setting a permalink in front matter for every page on your site is no fun. Luckily, Jekyll lets you set the permalink structure globally in your _config.yml.

To set a global permalink, you use the permalink variable in _config.yml. You can use placeholders to your desired output. For example:

permalink: /:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title:output_ext

Note that pages and collections (excluding posts and drafts) don’t have time and categories (for pages, the above :title is equivalent to :basename), these aspects of the permalink style are ignored for the output.

For example, a permalink style of /:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title:output_ext for the posts collection becomes /:title.html for pages and collections (excluding posts and drafts).

Placeholders

Here’s the full list of placeholders available:

Variable	Description
`:year`	Year from the post's filename with four digits. May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:short_year`	Year from the post's filename without the century. (00..99) May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:month`	Month from the post's filename. (01..12) May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:i_month`	Month without leading zeros from the post's filename. May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:short_month`	Three-letter month abbreviation, e.g. "Jan".
`:long_month` 4.0	Full month name, e.g. "January".
`:day`	Day of the month from the post's filename. (01..31) May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:i_day`	Day of the month without leading zeros from the post's filename. May be overridden via the document's `date` front matter.
`:y_day`	Ordinal day of the year from the post's filename, with leading zeros. (001..366)
`:w_year` 4.0	Week year which may differ from the month year for up to three days at the start of January and end of December
`:week` 4.0	Week number of the current year, starting with the first week having a majority of its days in January. (01..53)
`:w_day` 4.0	Day of the week, starting with Monday. (1..7)
`:short_day` 4.0	Three-letter weekday abbreviation, e.g. "Sun".
`:long_day` 4.0	Weekday name, e.g. "Sunday".
`:hour`	Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded from the post's `date` front matter. (00..23)
`:minute`	Minute of the hour from the post's `date` front matter. (00..59)
`:second`	Second of the minute from the post's `date` front matter. (00..59)
`:title`	Title from the document's filename. May be overridden via the document's `slug` front matter. Preserves case from the source.
`:slug`	Slugified title from the document's filename (any character except numbers and letters is replaced as hyphen). May be overridden via the document's `slug` front matter.
`:categories`	The specified categories for this post. If a post has multiple categories, Jekyll will create a hierarchy (e.g. `/category1/category2`). Also Jekyll automatically parses out double slashes in the URLs, so if no categories are present, it will ignore this.
`:slugified_categories` 4.1	The specified categories for this post but slugified. If a category is a composite of multiple words, Jekyll will downcase all alphabets and replace any non-alphanumeric character with a hyphen. (e.g. `"Work 2 Progress"` will be converted into `"work-2-progress"`). If a post has multiple categories, Jekyll will create a hierarchy (e.g. `/work-2-progress/category2`). Also Jekyll automatically parses out double slashes in the URLs, so if no categories are present, it will ignore this.
`:output_ext`	Extension of the output file. (Included by default and usually unnecessary.)

Built-in formats

For posts, Jekyll also provides the following built-in styles for convenience:

Permalink Style	URL Template
`date`	`/:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title:output_ext`
`pretty`	`/:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title/`
`ordinal`	`/:categories/:year/:y_day/:title:output_ext`
`weekdate` 4.0	`/:categories/:year/W:week/:short_day/:title:output_ext` (`W` will be prefixed to the value of `:week`)
`none`	`/:categories/:title:output_ext`

Rather than typing permalink: /:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title/, you can just type permalink: pretty.

Specifying permalinks through the front matter

Built-in permalink styles are not recognized in front matter. As a result, permalink: pretty will not work.

Collections

For collections (including posts and drafts), you have the option to override the global permalink in the collection configuration in _config.yml:

collections:
  my_collection:
    output: true
    permalink: /:collection/:name

Collections have the following placeholders available:

Variable	Description
`:collection`	Label of the containing collection.
`:path`	Path to the document relative to the collection's directory, including base filename of the document. However, does not include the file extension.
`:name`	The document's base filename but slugified: downcased and every sequence of non-alphanumeric character (including spaces) replaced by a hyphen.
`:title`	Takes on the value of front matter key `slug` if defined for the document. Otherwise takes on the string value generated from the document's base filename by piping through the `slugify` filter method with `pretty` option. Regardless of the value taken, the case of the alphabets are preserved instead of being replaced with lowercase counterparts.
`:output_ext`	Extension of the output file. (Included by default and usually unnecessary.)

Pages

For pages, you have to use front matter to override the global permalink, and if you set a permalink via front matter defaults in _config.yml, it will be ignored.

Pages have the following placeholders available:

Variable	Description
`:path`	Path between the source directory and the base filename of the page.
`:basename`	The page's base filename.
`:output_ext`	Extension of the output file. (Included by default and usually unnecessary.)