Eleventy and Jekyll presets advertise post URLs their generators don’t serve

[rmdes]

When a post is created, Indiekit returns the URL where it will live — in the Location
header, and in the interface as “Post will be created at …”. For preset-eleventy, and for
preset-jekyll on every type except article, that URL doesn’t resolve. The file is written
correctly and the request succeeds, so nothing surfaces the problem.

Cause

packages/preset-eleventy/lib/post-types.js:15-16

path: `${collection}/{yyyy}-{MM}-{dd}-{slug}.md`,
url:  `${collection}/{yyyy}/{MM}/{dd}/{slug}`,

The date goes into the filename and is advertised as path segments. Neither generator
makes that translation on its own, and neither preset writes a permalink to reconcile it.

packages/preset-jekyll/lib/post-types.js:34-35 has the same pair for every non-article
type. Jekyll does derive URLs from filename dates, but only inside _posts — which is why
article works there and the collection types don’t. preset-eleventy has no such branch:
it loops over every type, so articles are affected too.

preset-hugo is unaffected — it puts no date in either the path or the URL.

Affected post types

Preset	Affected
preset-eleventy	all post types
preset-jekyll	all except article

Observed

Tested against each generator’s canonical starter, not a bare scaffold.

Generator	Starter	Advertised	Served
Eleventy 3.1.6	eleventy-base-blog	/notes/2026/08/22/hello-note	/notes/2026-08-22-hello-note
Jekyll 4.4.1	jekyll new (minima)	/notes/2026/08/22/hello-note	/notes/2026-08-22-hello-note
Hugo 0.165.0	hugo new site + ananke	/notes/hello-note	/notes/hello-note ✓

Reproduced by adding one file to a stock starter:

printf -- '---\ndate: 2026-08-22T10:05:00.000Z\n---\n\nMARKER\n' \
  > content/notes/2026-08-22-hello-note.md   # _notes/… for Jekyll

then building and looking for where MARKER landed.

Impact

The failure is silent. Micropub returns 202, the file is correct, and the URL 404s. If
syndication is enabled, the dead URL has already been posted to Mastodon or Bluesky. On an
IndieWeb site the permalink is the post’s identity, so a URL that doesn’t resolve defeats
the point of publishing to your own domain.

Suggested fix

Write the url property into front matter as a permalink, so the file declares the URL
Indiekit promised rather than leaving the generator to infer one. Both presets need it.

Separately, and not fixable by a preset: a stock jekyll new _config.yml has no
collections block, so documents written to _notes, _photos and so on produce no page at
all until the user adds

collections:
  notes:
    output: true

This isn’t mentioned in the preset README, get-started or concepts, and a user bringing an
existing Jekyll blog has no reason to have configured collections Indiekit introduces for
them. Worth a line in the docs.

[rmdes]

Two findings from building getindiekit/jekyll-starter that sharpen this, both re-run today against Jekyll 4.4.1.

article isn't exempt on Jekyll either

The issue notes that article works under preset-jekyll because Jekyll derives URLs from filename dates inside _posts. It derives the date segments — but not the extension. Stock Jekyll, _posts, no permalink config:

_posts/2026-08-23-hello-note.md   →   _site/2026/08/23/hello-note.html

while the preset advertises /{yyyy}/{MM}/{dd}/{slug} — no .html. So the advertised URL resolves only on a host that falls back to .html (GitHub Pages, Netlify, jekyll serve's WEBrick) and 404s on a plain static host. Jekyll's default permalink style is date, i.e. /:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title:output_ext, so the extension is expected there.

That makes the "affected post types" table read, for preset-jekyll, all types — article differs only in how it breaks: the others land in an unrendered collection, article renders at a URL one character off.

Fixing the collection types needs two things, not one

Adding the collection isn't sufficient. output: true alone renders a flat file:

notes: { output: true }                          # → _site/notes/hello.html
notes: { output: true, permalink: /notes/:name/ }  # → _site/notes/hello/index.html

Without the trailing-slash permalink you land back in exactly the .html situation above. Both halves are required for the URL Indiekit reports to resolve on a plain static host.

Worth noting for anyone testing a fix: http-server — which several of us reach for — has .html fallback on by default and it cannot be disabled (--ext '' is a no-op; --ext false is parsed as a positional and silently changes the served root). So it answers /notes/hello with 200 either way, and no HTTP assertion can tell a flat file from a directory index. python -m http.server returns 404 and does discriminate.

Dated URLs, if anyone wants the opt-in

The dated shape the presets advertise is reachable on Jekyll, with the matching permalink:

notes: { output: true, permalink: /notes/:year/:month/:day/:title/ }

_notes/2026-08-23-hello.md → /notes/2026/08/23/hello/, which matches preset-jekyll's default notes/{yyyy}/{MM}/{dd}/{slug}. Jekyll strips the date prefix for :title. For article the equivalent is a top-level permalink: /:year/:month/:day/:title/.

getindiekit/jekyll-starter takes the dateless route instead — path and url set to the same shape per type, with a matching trailing-slash permalink per collection — so it works with the preset as it ships today and doesn't depend on this issue being resolved either way.

[rmdes]

I started on a fix and stopped, because checking each generator's documentation turned up a mechanism question that's yours to settle rather than mine. @paulrobertlloyd if you can chime into this, give me your take, I can then move forward :)

Laying out what I found.

Every one of the three exposes the same lever

Each generator has a site-configuration route for URL patterns — and a per-document override in front matter:

	site config (a preset cannot write this)	per-document front matter (a preset can)
Eleventy	directory data file with a permalink function	permalink:
Jekyll	collections.<name>.permalink in _config.yml	permalink: — front matter takes precedence over config
Hugo	[permalinks] in config	url: — "completely override the generated URL path"

The per-document override is the only lever available to a preset, and it's documented in all three. Eleventy's permalink docs use it for precisely this case:

---
permalink: "/{{ page.date | date: '%Y/%m/%d' }}/index.html"
---

Two ways to fix this

A — emit the URL as front matter, in every preset. postTemplate already receives properties.url and currently discards it (delete properties.url; // Not required). Writing it out as permalink: (Eleventy, Jekyll) or url: (Hugo) makes the generator serve exactly what Indiekit advertised.

Symmetric across all three presets, and it makes the advertised URL authoritative rather than hopeful. It also means the dated-vs-dateless choice follows publication.postTypes automatically — someone who overrides postTypes to a dateless shape gets a dateless permalink, with no new configuration surface.

The cost: it writes a URL into every post file. Change your site's URL scheme later and every existing post's front matter overrides it, so a site-wide change means rewriting files. That's the part I don't think I should decide.

B — make the path produce the URL, per generator. For preset-eleventy that's a one-line change writing the date as directories (notes/2026/08/22/hello.md) rather than into the filename, since Eleventy derives a page's URL from its input path. Nothing is written into front matter.

Less intrusive, but asymmetric — it doesn't generalise to Jekyll, whose collections need output: true in _config.yml regardless — and it isn't the idiom the Eleventy docs teach for dated URLs.

I opened #916 implementing B for Eleventy before doing this reading, and have moved it to draft rather than closing it, in case you prefer that direction. It's tested and passes; it just may be the wrong mechanism.

One thing neither approach fixes

Jekyll collections need output: true in _config.yml or nothing is rendered at all, and no preset can write that file. So preset-jekyll can be improved here but not closed — the remaining half is documentation. Worth knowing before picking A.

Also worth correcting from my earlier comment

article under preset-jekyll isn't exempt. Left unconfigured it goes to _posts/, and stock Jekyll renders that to /2026/08/23/hello.html while the preset advertises the extension-less URL — so it resolves only on hosts that fall back to .html. It breaks differently from the collection types, not less.

Happy to implement whichever you prefer, in separate PRs per preset. If you'd rather not write URLs into content files at all, B for Eleventy plus documentation for Jekyll and Hugo is a coherent smaller answer.

[rmdes]

@paulrobertlloyd Rather than keep both halves waiting on the mechanism question, I’ve split it.

Eleventy → #916, now out of draft and rebased on main. It takes the second route: the date moves into directories, so the file lands where the advertised URL already points and Eleventy serves it unchanged. No front matter is written into posts, so there is nothing to unwind if a site changes its URL scheme later. It’s also the shape getindiekit/eleventy-starter documents for dated URLs, so the preset default and the starter agree. One line in post-types.js, plus a test that fails on the unfixed code; 10/10 locally, CI green.

Jekyll stays with this issue. The preset can’t fix it on its own: collection types need output: true and a permalink under collections in _config.yml, which only the site can provide.

If you’d rather the presets wrote permalink into front matter after all (route A), say so and I’ll rework #916 that way instead.