Permalinks

You can customize the default location of templates to the output directory using Eleventy’s permalinks feature.

Here’s a few examples of how it works by default (assuming your output directory is the default, _site):

Cool URIs don’t change Jump to heading #

Eleventy automatically helps you make sure that Cool URIs don’t change.

What to leave out…
File name extension. This is a very common one. "cgi", even ".html" is something which will change. You may not be using HTML for that page in 20 years time, but you might want today's links to it to still be valid. The canonical way of making links to the W3C site doesn't use the extension.

Changing the output location Jump to heading #

To remap your template’s output to a different path than the default, use the permalink key in the template’s front matter. If a subdirectory does not exist, it will be created.

---
permalink: "this-is-a-new-path/subdirectory/testing/index.html"
---

The above is functionally equivalent to:

---
permalink: "this-is-a-new-path/subdirectory/testing/"
---

Both of the above examples will write to _site/this-is-a-new-path/subdirectory/testing/index.html.

Fear not: if multiple input files attempt to write to the same output location, Eleventy will throw an error for you!

Skip writing to the file system Jump to heading #

If you set the permalink value to be false, this will disable writing the file to disk in your output folder. The file will still be processed normally (and present in collections, with its url and outputPath properties set to false) but will not be available in your output directory as a standalone template.

---
permalink: false
---

Use template syntax in Permalink Jump to heading #

You may use data variables here (and template syntax, too). These will be parsed with the current template’s rendering engine. It’s recommended to use the provided slugify filter to create URL-safe strings from data.

For example:

---
title: This is a New Path
permalink: "subdir/{{ title | slugify }}/index.html"
---

• Pagination variables also work here! Read more about Pagination

Writes to _site/subdir/this-is-a-new-path/index.html.

---
date: "2016-01-01T06:00-06:00"
permalink: "/{{ page.date | date: '%Y/%m/%d' }}/index.html"
---

Put quotes around template syntax in YAML Jump to heading #

permalink: "{{ page.filePathStem }}.html"

The error message might look like can not read a block mapping entry; a multiline key may not be an implicit key.

Custom File Formats Jump to heading #

You can change the file extension in the permalink to output to any file type. For example, to generate a JSON search index to be used by popular search libraries:

---
permalink: "index.json"
---
<%- JSON.stringify(collections.all) -%>

Advanced Usage Jump to heading #

Mapping one URL to Multiple Files for Internationalization Added in v2.0.0 Jump to heading #

Decouple a page’s primary URL from its permalink.

As an example, say you have two content files: about.en.html and about.es.html. You’ve already set up the addGlobalData feature to remap their respective output to _site/about.en.html and _site/about.es.html.

Use server-side redirects to control which of these files is shown.

• Netlify Redirects
• Apache Content Negotiation related to Issue #761

These will work as expected out of the box, except for the page.url variable and the URL reported in collection objects (et al).

Say we want two or more files on the file system (e.g. about.en.html and about.es.html) to map to a single page URL (/about/—not /about.en.html or /about.es.html). This is now possible using a new URL Transforms feature. URL transforms let you modify the page.url for a content document based.

This example matches any .xx.html URL:

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
  eleventyConfig.addUrlTransform(({url}) => {
    // `url` is guaranteed to be a string here even if you’re using `permalink: false`
    if (url.match(/\.[a-z]{2}\.html$/i)) {
        return url.slice(0, -1 * ".en.html".length) + "/";
    }

    // Returning undefined skips the url transform.
  });
};

This approach unlocks functionality for the default build mode of Eleventy but you could also achieve some of the same functionality using the Edge or Serverless plugins.

Disable templating in permalinks Jump to heading #

Some template syntaxes are nicer than others and you may want to opt-out of the templating engine here. Use the dynamicPermalink option in your front matter to disable this on a per-template basis.

---
permalink: "/this-will-be-a-string-without-templating/"
dynamicPermalink: false
---

Globally disable templating in permalinks Jump to heading #

Eleventy includes a global configuration option to disable dynamic templating altogether. This will save a few template renders and is probably marginally faster, too.

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
  // Enabled by default
  eleventyConfig.setDynamicPermalinks(false);
};

Ignore the output directory Jump to heading #

To remap your template’s output to a directory independent of the output directory (--output), use permalinkBypassOutputDir: true in your front matter.

---
permalink: "_includes/index.html"
permalinkBypassOutputDir: true
---

Writes to _includes/index.html even though the output directory is _site. This is useful for writing child templates to the _includes directory for re-use in your other templates.

Other pages in Working with Templates:

• Add CSS, JS, Fonts
• Layouts
  • Layout Chaining
• Collections
• Create Pages From Data
• Pagination
  • Pagination Navigation
• Content Dates
• Permalinks
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Common Pitfalls