Post URL Generated by Jekyll

Knowing how Jekyll forms the url for you makes it easier to work with.

Posts categories and permalink #

To publish a jekyll post, you put it under the directory _posts/, which is automatically recognized by Jekyll. It is mandatory that the file name has the format yyyy-mm-dd-post-name.md, so it can be used to generate the associated post url.

For example, the markdown file of this page is 2018-10-04-post-url-by-jekyll.md (under _posts/), which should show up as a page at my-host-name**/2018/10/04/post-url-by-jekyll.html**.

Note, however, that the post URL is modified when “categories” and “permalink” are set in the front matter of the post.

•              | /2018/10/04/article-name.html
  

categories: catA | /catA/2018/10/04/article-name.html categories: [catA, catB] | /catA/catB/2018/10/04/article-name.html permalink: /pl/ | /pl/2018/10/04/article-name.html permalink: /pl/pl/ | /pl/pl/2018/10/04/article-name.html

1. “permalink” dominates when is set, in which case “categories” no longer affects the url (The category setting still works, but is not reflected in the url).
2. “tags” does not change the url.
3. The directory structure under _post/ does not change the url (even when both categories and permalink are not present.)

Pages permalink #

You can freely create pages that are not posts and put them outside the _posts directly. They simply become stand-alone web pages. The url of these pages are determined by the directory structure. This can be overwritten by specifying a permalink in the front matter.

For example, if I have a file under a directly page_dir/ (not special to jekyll, unlike _posts/), say page_dir/pageA.md. then directory becomes part of the page url unless a permalink is specified.

•                   | /page_dir/pageA.html
  

permalink: /pageA.html | /pageA.html

Unlike for posts:

1. “categories” does not matter.
2. “permalink” completely decide the page url. So include everything needed.