About Links
There are three types of links in the MariaDB docs: external, relative, and space. The general rules for when to use each are:
If the link is outside of
https://mariadb.com/docs/
→ Use an External LinkIf the link is to a page in the same space → Use a Relative Link
If the link is to a page in another space → Use a Space Link
See About Spaces for information on what Spaces are.
About Spaces
In GitBook (our documentation system), Spaces are the main sections of the site you see along the top of every docs page:

What space you are in is very important in determining whether you need to use a Relative or Space link. Gitbook identifies Spaces via a unique space identifier. See the Space Links section for more details. We also have a handy list of Space prefixes for use when creating space links in Markdown.
External Links
External links are the easiest, they are to external pages outside the https://mariadb.com/docs site. Some examples in Markdown syntax of external links are:
* [Example Website](https://example.com)
* [MariaDB Corp Blog](https://mariadb.com/blog)
* [MariaDB JIRA](https://jira.mariadb.org)
Technically, you can use external links for links to docs content, you just put in the full URI to the page you want to link to. However, if you do that we lose the ability to automatically update the link if the page you're linking to is moved or renamed. So for links to docs content we prefer to use Relative Links or Space Links.
Relative Links
Relative links are links to a page in the same space, relative to the page you are editing. For example a relative link to the Joining the Community page, from this page, looks like this in Markdown:
[Joining the Community](../../community/joining-the-community.md)
One big limitation of relative links is that they cannot cross Space boundaries.
This page you are currently reading is under the General Resources space, so we can use internal links to link to other pages under https://mariadb.com/docs/general-resources/
. If we want to link to a page in another space, we need to use Space Links.
Space Links
To link to pages in other Spaces we need to use special Space Links which use an internal identifier so that GitBook knows exactly what page you are pointing to.
A space link begins with https://app.gitbook.com/s/
, followed by a unique alphanumeric space identifier
(in this doc we'll call both of these together the space prefix
), and finally the path
to the page.
The path
is everything after the space name in a full page URI. For example, take the following full URI for the Securing MariaDB page:
https://mariadb.com/docs/server/security/securing-mariadb
In this URI, the space name is server
and the path
, if you were creating a space link, is:
/security/securing-mariadb
To convert that into a space link we need to get the Server space identifier and combine it with the path. Rather than list out just the identifiers for our spaces, we have a List of Space Prefixes that you can copy from when creating space links.
Continuing with our example, a full space link in Markdown for the Securing MariaDB page is: space prefix
(for the Server space) + path
:
[Securing MariaDB](https://app.gitbook.com/s/SsmexDFPv2xG2OTyO5yV/security/securing-mariadb)
See the List of Space Prefixes section for a list of all of our space prefixes.
List of Space Prefixes
A handy list of all space prefixes for the MariaDB Docs:
MariaDB Platform space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/JqgUabdZsoY5EiaJmqgn
Server space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/SsmexDFPv2xG2OTyO5yV
MaxScale space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/0pSbu5DcMSW4KwAkUcmX
ColumnStore space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/rBEU9juWLfTDcdwF3Q14
Galera Cluster space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/3VYeeVGUV4AMqrA3zwy7
Connectors space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/CjGYMsT2MVP4nd3IyW2L
Tools space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/kuTXWg0NDbRx6XUeYpGD
Release Notes space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb
General Resources space prefix
https://app.gitbook.com/s/WCInJQ9cmGjq1lsTG91E
Space Link Examples
Here are some examples of Markdown links to various pages using space links:
Options, System & Status Variables in the Server space
[Options, System & Status Variables](https://app.gitbook.com/s/SsmexDFPv2xG2OTyO5yV/reference/full-list-of-mariadb-options-system-and-status-variables
MariaDB 12.1 Changes & Improvements in the Release Notes space
[MariaDB 12.1 Changes & Improvements](https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb/community-server/release-notes-mariadb-12.1-rolling-releases/changes-and-improvements-in-mariadb-12.1)
List of MariaDB Connector/C Releases in the Connectors space
[List of MariaDB Connector/C Releases/](https://app.gitbook.com/s/CjGYMsT2MVP4nd3IyW2L/mariadb-connector-c/list-of-mariadb-connector-c-releases)
When Space Links are rendered to the public site, GitBook handles translating Space Links into a link to the correct page. And if a page is moved or renamed then the link will be automatically updated on every page it appears on.
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