URL management

Overview

By default, when Hugo renders a page, the resulting URL matches the file path within the content directory. For example:

content/posts/post-1.md → https://example.org/posts/post-1/

You can change the structure and appearance of URLs with front matter values and site configuration options.

Front matter

slug

Set the slug in front matter to override the last segment of the path. The slug value does not affect section pages.

---
slug: my-first-post
title: My First Post
---

+++
slug = 'my-first-post'
title = 'My First Post'
+++

{
   "slug": "my-first-post",
   "title": "My First Post"
}

The resulting URL will be:

https://example.org/posts/my-first-post/

url

Set the url in front matter to override the entire path. Use this with either regular pages or section pages.

If you set both slug and url in front matter, the url value takes precedence.

Include a colon

If you need to include a colon in the url front matter field, escape it with backslash characters. Use one backslash if you wrap the string within single quotes, or use two backslashes if you wrap the string within double quotes. With YAML front matter, use a single backslash if you omit quotation marks.

For example, with this front matter:

---
title: Example
url: my\:example
---

+++
title = 'Example'
url = 'my\:example'
+++

{
   "title": "Example",
   "url": "my\\:example"
}

The resulting URL will be:

https://example.org/my:example/

As described above, this will fail on Windows because the colon (:) is a reserved character.

File extensions

With this front matter:

---
title: My First Article
url: articles/my-first-article
---

+++
title = 'My First Article'
url = 'articles/my-first-article'
+++

{
   "title": "My First Article",
   "url": "articles/my-first-article"
}

The resulting URL will be:

https://example.org/articles/my-first-article/

If you include a file extension:

---
title: My First Article
url: articles/my-first-article.html
---

+++
title = 'My First Article'
url = 'articles/my-first-article.html'
+++

{
   "title": "My First Article",
   "url": "articles/my-first-article.html"
}

The resulting URL will be:

https://example.org/articles/my-first-article.html

Leading slashes

With monolingual sites, url values with or without a leading slash are relative to the baseURL. With multilingual sites, url values with a leading slash are relative to the baseURL, and url values without a leading slash are relative to the baseURL plus the language prefix.

Permalinks tokens in front matter

You can also use tokens when setting the url value. This is typically used in cascade sections:

---
cascade:
- url: /:sections[last]/:slug
title: Bar
---

+++
title = 'Bar'
[[cascade]]
  url = '/:sections[last]/:slug'
+++

{
   "cascade": [
      {
         "url": "/:sections[last]/:slug"
      }
   ],
   "title": "Bar"
}

Site configuration

Permalinks

In your site configuration, define a URL pattern for each top-level section. Each URL pattern can target a given language and/or page kind.

Front matter url values override the URL patterns defined in the permalinks section of your site configuration.

Monolingual examples

With this content structure:

content/
├── posts/
│   ├── bash-in-slow-motion.md
│   └── tls-in-a-nutshell.md
├── tutorials/
│   ├── git-for-beginners.md
│   └── javascript-bundling-with-hugo.md
└── _index.md

Render tutorials under “training”, and render the posts under “articles” with a date-base hierarchy:

permalinks:
  page:
    posts: /articles/:year/:month/:slug/
    tutorials: /training/:slug/
  section:
    posts: /articles/
    tutorials: /training/

[permalinks]
  [permalinks.page]
    posts = '/articles/:year/:month/:slug/'
    tutorials = '/training/:slug/'
  [permalinks.section]
    posts = '/articles/'
    tutorials = '/training/'

{
   "permalinks": {
      "page": {
         "posts": "/articles/:year/:month/:slug/",
         "tutorials": "/training/:slug/"
      },
      "section": {
         "posts": "/articles/",
         "tutorials": "/training/"
      }
   }
}

The structure of the published site will be:

public/
├── articles/
│   ├── 2023/
│   │   ├── 04/
│   │   │   └── bash-in-slow-motion/
│   │   │       └── index.html
│   │   └── 06/
│   │       └── tls-in-a-nutshell/
│   │           └── index.html
│   └── index.html
├── training/
│   ├── git-for-beginners/
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── javascript-bundling-with-hugo/
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
└── index.html

To create a date-based hierarchy for regular pages in the content root:

permalinks:
  page:
    /: /:year/:month/:slug/

[permalinks]
  [permalinks.page]
    '/' = '/:year/:month/:slug/'

{
   "permalinks": {
      "page": {
         "/": "/:year/:month/:slug/"
      }
   }
}

Use the same approach with taxonomy terms. For example, to omit the taxonomy segment of the URL:

permalinks:
  term:
    tags: /:slug/

[permalinks]
  [permalinks.term]
    tags = '/:slug/'

{
   "permalinks": {
      "term": {
         "tags": "/:slug/"
      }
   }
}

Multilingual example

Use the permalinks configuration as a component of your localization strategy.

With this content structure:

content/
├── en/
│   ├── books/
│   │   ├── les-miserables.md
│   │   └── the-hunchback-of-notre-dame.md
│   └── _index.md
└── es/
    ├── books/
    │   ├── les-miserables.md
    │   └── the-hunchback-of-notre-dame.md
    └── _index.md

And this site configuration:

defaultContentLanguage: en
defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: true
languages:
  en:
    contentDir: content/en
    languageCode: en-US
    languageDirection: ltr
    languageName: English
    permalinks:
      page:
        books: /books/:slug/
      section:
        books: /books/
    weight: 1
  es:
    contentDir: content/es
    languageCode: es-ES
    languageDirection: ltr
    languageName: Español
    permalinks:
      page:
        books: /libros/:slug/
      section:
        books: /libros/
    weight: 2

defaultContentLanguage = 'en'
defaultContentLanguageInSubdir = true
[languages]
  [languages.en]
    contentDir = 'content/en'
    languageCode = 'en-US'
    languageDirection = 'ltr'
    languageName = 'English'
    weight = 1
    [languages.en.permalinks]
      [languages.en.permalinks.page]
        books = '/books/:slug/'
      [languages.en.permalinks.section]
        books = '/books/'
  [languages.es]
    contentDir = 'content/es'
    languageCode = 'es-ES'
    languageDirection = 'ltr'
    languageName = 'Español'
    weight = 2
    [languages.es.permalinks]
      [languages.es.permalinks.page]
        books = '/libros/:slug/'
      [languages.es.permalinks.section]
        books = '/libros/'

{
   "defaultContentLanguage": "en",
   "defaultContentLanguageInSubdir": true,
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "contentDir": "content/en",
         "languageCode": "en-US",
         "languageDirection": "ltr",
         "languageName": "English",
         "permalinks": {
            "page": {
               "books": "/books/:slug/"
            },
            "section": {
               "books": "/books/"
            }
         },
         "weight": 1
      },
      "es": {
         "contentDir": "content/es",
         "languageCode": "es-ES",
         "languageDirection": "ltr",
         "languageName": "Español",
         "permalinks": {
            "page": {
               "books": "/libros/:slug/"
            },
            "section": {
               "books": "/libros/"
            }
         },
         "weight": 2
      }
   }
}

The structure of the published site will be:

public/
├── en/
│   ├── books/
│   │   ├── les-miserables/
│   │   │   └── index.html
│   │   ├── the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/
│   │   │   └── index.html
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
├── es/
│   ├── libros/
│   │   ├── les-miserables/
│   │   │   └── index.html
│   │   ├── the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/
│   │   │   └── index.html
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
└── index.html

Tokens

Use these tokens when defining the URL pattern. You can also use these tokens when setting the url value in front matter.

:year

The 4-digit year as defined in the front matter date field.

:month

The 2-digit month as defined in the front matter date field.

:monthname

The name of the month as defined in the front matter date field.

:day

The 2-digit day as defined in the front matter date field.

:weekday

The 1-digit day of the week as defined in the front matter date field (Sunday = 0).

:weekdayname

The name of the day of the week as defined in the front matter date field.

:yearday

The 1- to 3-digit day of the year as defined in the front matter date field.

:section

The content’s section.

:sections

The content’s sections hierarchy. You can use a selection of the sections using slice syntax: :sections[1:] includes all but the first, :sections[:last] includes all but the last, :sections[last] includes only the last, :sections[1:2] includes section 2 and 3. Note that this slice access will not throw any out-of-bounds errors, so you don’t have to be exact.

:title

The title as defined in front matter, else the automatic title. Hugo generates titles automatically for section, taxonomy, and term pages that are not backed by a file.

:slug

The slug as defined in front matter, else the title as defined in front matter, else the automatic title. Hugo generates titles automatically for section, taxonomy, and term pages that are not backed by a file.

:filename

The content’s file name without extension, applicable to the page page kind.

:slugorfilename

The slug as defined in front matter, else the content’s file name without extension, applicable to the page page kind.

For time-related values, you can also use the layout string components defined in Go’s time package. For example:

permalinks:
  posts: /:06/:1/:2/:title/

[permalinks]
  posts = '/:06/:1/:2/:title/'

{
   "permalinks": {
      "posts": "/:06/:1/:2/:title/"
   }
}

Appearance

The appearance of a URL is either ugly or pretty.

By default, Hugo produces pretty URLs. To generate ugly URLs, change your site configuration:

uglyURLs: true

uglyURLs = true

{
   "uglyURLs": true
}

You can also enable uglyURLs by section. For example, with a site that contains sections for books and films:

uglyURLs:
  books: true
  films: false

[uglyURLs]
  books = true
  films = false

{
   "uglyURLs": {
      "books": true,
      "films": false
   }
}

Post-processing

Hugo provides two mutually exclusive configuration options to alter URLs after it renders a page.

Canonical URLs

If enabled, Hugo performs a search and replace after it renders the page. It searches for site-relative URLs (those with a leading slash) associated with action, href, src, srcset, and url attributes. It then prepends the baseURL to create absolute URLs.

<a href="/about"> → <a href="https://example.org/about/">
<img src="/a.gif"> → <img src="https://example.org/a.gif">

This is an imperfect, brute force approach that can affect content as well as HTML attributes. As noted above, this is a legacy configuration option that will likely be removed in a future release.

To enable:

canonifyURLs: true

canonifyURLs = true

{
   "canonifyURLs": true
}

Relative URLs

If enabled, Hugo performs a search and replace after it renders the page. It searches for site-relative URLs (those with a leading slash) associated with action, href, src, srcset, and url attributes. It then transforms the URL to be relative to the current page.

For example, when rendering content/posts/post-1:

<a href="/about"> → <a href="../../about">
<img src="/a.gif"> → <img src="../../a.gif">

This is an imperfect, brute force approach that can affect content as well as HTML attributes. As noted above, do not enable this option unless you are creating a serverless site.

To enable:

relativeURLs: true

relativeURLs = true

{
   "relativeURLs": true
}

Aliases

Create redirects from old URLs to new URLs with aliases:

• An alias with a leading slash is relative to the baseURL
• An alias without a leading slash is relative to the current directory

Examples

Change the file name of an existing page, and create an alias from the previous URL to the new URL:

aliases:
- /posts/previous-file-name

aliases = ['/posts/previous-file-name']

{
   "aliases": [
      "/posts/previous-file-name"
   ]
}

Each of these directory-relative aliases is equivalent to the site-relative alias above:

• previous-file-name
• ./previous-file-name
• ../posts/previous-file-name

You can create more than one alias to the current page:

aliases:
- previous-file-name
- original-file-name

aliases = ['previous-file-name', 'original-file-name']

{
   "aliases": [
      "previous-file-name",
      "original-file-name"
   ]
}

In a multilingual site, use a directory-relative alias, or include the language prefix with a site-relative alias:

aliases:
- /de/posts/previous-file-name

aliases = ['/de/posts/previous-file-name']

{
   "aliases": [
      "/de/posts/previous-file-name"
   ]
}

How aliases work

Using the first example above, Hugo generates the following site structure:

public/
├── posts/
│   ├── new-file-name/
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── previous-file-name/
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
└── index.html

The alias from the previous URL to the new URL is a client-side redirect:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-us">
  <head>
    <title>https://example.org/posts/new-file-name/</title>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.org/posts/new-file-name/">
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://example.org/posts/new-file-name/">
  </head>
</html>

Collectively, the elements in the head section:

• Tell search engines that the new URL is canonical
• Tell search engines not to index the previous URL
• Tell the browser to redirect to the new URL

Hugo renders alias files before rendering pages. A new page with the previous file name will overwrite the alias, as expected.

Customize

To override Hugo’s embedded alias template, copy the source code to a file with the same name in the layouts directory. The template receives the following context:

Permalink

The link to the page being aliased.

Page

The Page data for the page being aliased.