# Permalinks

# Background

MdPress retrieves all Markdown files in the documents source directory and defines the page links based on the file hierarchy. For example if you have the following file structure:

├── package.json
└── source
    ├── _post
    │   └── intro-mdpress.md
    ├── index.md
    └── tags.md

Then you will get following available pages:

/source/
/source/tags.html
/source/_post/intro-mdpress.html

Yet, for a blog system, we hope that the link of a post can be customized. MdPress started supporting this feature, known as permalink, from 1.0.0. Then, the actual pages would be:

/source/
/source/tags/
/source/2018/4/1/intro-mdpress.html

We have seen the shadow of the blog. Let’s continue to look down.

# Permalinks

A permalink is a URL that is intended to remain unchanged for a long time, yielding a hyperlink that is less susceptible to link rot¹. MdPress supports a flexible way to build permalinks, allowing you to use template variables.

The default permalink is /:regular.

# Configure Permalinks

You can configure globally to apply it for all pages:

// .mdpress/config.js
module.exports = {
  permalink: '/:year/:month/:day/:slug'
}

You can also set permalink on a page only, and it will have a higher priority than the global settings.

📝 hello.md:

---
title: Hello World
permalink: /hello-world
---

Hello!

# Template Variables