Jekyll External Link Accessibility

This plugin makes every link in your blog posts open in a new tab accessibly (target, title, a new-tab icon, and a screen-reader note), and adds rel="nofollow" to external links.

Setup

1. Add the gem to your Gemfile:

   gem 'jekyll-external-link-accessibility'

2. Run bundle install to install the gem
3. Add the following to your _config.yml:

   plugins:
     - jekyll-external-link-accessibility

Usage

The plugin edits every link in a post, internal and external:

• All links open in a new tab so readers don't lose their place, with a title, a new-tab icon, and a screen-reader-only "opens a new window" note. Skip a specific link by adding data-no-external="true", e.g. <a href="...." data-no-external="true">...</a>.
• External links (pointing to a host other than your site's url in _config.yml) also get a rel attribute (external nofollow noopener noreferrer by default, see Configuration). The nofollow keeps them from passing your link equity off-site, so internal links are left without a rel. The www. prefix and host casing are ignored when comparing hosts.

Configuration

You can override the default configuration by adding the following section to your Jekyll site's _config.yml:

external_links:
  rel: external nofollow noopener noreferrer
  target: _blank
  title: Opens a new window

Styling

Next to each link is a new-tab icon with a icon-external-link class name. You need to have the styles in your project. For example, we use icomoon for icons:

.icon-external-link:before {
  content: "\ea7e";
}

Default Configuration

Key	Default Value	Description
external_links.rel	external nofollow noopener noreferrer	The rel attribute to add to external links.
external_links.target	_blank	The target attribute to add to external links.
external_links.title	Opens a new window	The title attribute to add title to links.

Steps to release a new version

We follow Semantic Versioning: bump MAJOR for incompatible changes, MINOR for backwards-compatible features, and PATCH for backwards-compatible bug fixes.

1. Update the version in lib/jekyll-external-link-accessibility/version.rb
2. Update CHANGELOG.md: move the main (unreleased) entries under a new vX.Y.Z / YYYY-MM-DD header
3. Push a release/vX.Y.Z branch with those changes
4. Open a pull request titled "Release vX.Y.Z" and merge it to main
5. Tag the release and push the tag:

   git checkout main && git pull
   git tag vX.Y.Z
   git push --tags

6. Build the gem:

   gem build jekyll-external-link-accessibility.gemspec

7. Push it to RubyGems:

   gem push jekyll-external-link-accessibility-X.Y.Z.gem