Permalinks

A permalink controls an output path.

The official Jekyll documentation states this directly: permalinks let source organization and output organization differ.

Page-level permalink

---
title: About Me
permalink: /about/
---

Your source might still be:

about.md

but the public path becomes:

/about/

Test the output

Build.

Inspect _site.

Find what file structure supports /about/.

Do not stop at the pretty URL.

Global and content-type rules

Jekyll also supports global permalink configuration and collection-specific permalink patterns.

Posts can use date/category/title placeholders.

Collections can use collection/name placeholders.

You do not need to memorize every placeholder.

You do need to understand that permalink policy can be centralized.

Controlled change

Change one page permalink.

Before building, predict:

• old URL;
• new URL;
• generated destination path;
• which links might now break.

Build and inspect.

URL stability matters

Changing a permalink after publishing can break incoming links.

During a student project that may be recoverable.

On a production site it becomes a compatibility decision.

Checkpoint

Add one deliberate permalink to a portfolio page and document why the public URL is better than simply accepting the source filename.