thegreatape / jekyll-migrate-permalink

A custom Jekyll command to help deal with side effects of changing your permalink

jekyll-migrate-permalink

jekyll-migrate-permalink is a plugin that aims to make your life easier if you're considering changing your permalink. I got the idea for this plugin as I was considering a switch from /blog/:title to /title.

A change to your permalink means that any backlinks to your site will break. You have a few options...

• Redirect all old URLs to the new permalinks.
• Continue serving old content at your old URL and only use the new permalink style for new content

jekyll-migrate-permalink can help you with either approach.

Installation

This plugin is available as a RubyGem

Add this line to your Gemfile:

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem 'jekyll-migrate-permalink'
end

Then execute the bundle command to install the gem.

Usage

Redirect all old URLs to the new permalink

The jekyll-redirect-from plugin is available on GitHub pages can be used to for creating redirects. However, to do this you need to update your front matter with a redirect_from specifying the old URL. jekyll-migrate-permalink makes this process painless.

1. Before changing your permalink style in _config.yml run jekyll migrate-permalink. The front matter will be updated on all your posts with a redirect_from referencing your post's current URL.
2. Update your permalink in _config.yml
3. Build your site!

Continue serving old content at old URLs

jekyll-migrate-plugin can also help with this approach. Again, it's painless

1. Before changing your permalink style in _config.yml run jekyll migrate-permalink --strategy retain. The front matter will be updated on all your posts with a permalink referencing your current post's URL.
2. Update your permalink in _config.yml
3. Build your site!

Caveats

Note that the plugin loads the front matter as YAML in order to safely manipulate, and then converts it back to a string. This process may result in some slight formatting changes to your front matter.