Posts and pages

Create posts, fill in front matter, add images and shape the home page.

Create a post

hugo new content posts/my-first-post.md

Hugo creates the file from the theme’s post template, and turns the file name into a title:

---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2026-10-15T10:00:00+07:00
draft: true # Set 'false' to publish
tableOfContents: false # Enable/disable Table of Contents
description: ''
categories:
  - Uncategories
tags:
  -
---

Write your post below the closing ---. While draft is true, the post only appears when you run hugo server -D.

Front matter reference

Field	What it does
`title`	Heading of the post and text of the browser tab.
`date`	Publish date. Shown as “3 days ago” while recent, then as a full date. See Dates.
`draft`	`true` hides the post from the published site.
`description`	One or two sentences shown under the title in post lists, and used as the page’s meta description.
`categories`	One or more categories. See Categories and tags.
`tags`	Any number of tags, listed at the bottom of the post.
`tableOfContents`	`true` adds a table of contents above the post.

Posts with images

Give a post its own folder and keep the images next to it. Hugo calls this a page bundle:

content/posts/
└── my-trip/
    ├── index.md
    └── beach.jpg

Then show the image with the img shortcode:

{{< img src="beach.jpg" alt="Sunset over the beach" caption="Last evening of the trip" >}}

The post’s address comes from the folder name: /posts/my-trip/. See Shortcodes for every option.

Summaries in lists

Each post in a list shows a short text under its title:

the description from the front matter, if there is one;
otherwise the text before a `

line, if you added one to the post; 3. otherwise the firstsummaryLength` words of the post (15 in the example site).

Writing a description gives you the most control, and search engines use it too.

The posts list

content/posts/_index.md controls the page at /posts/:

---
title: "Post"
header: "Latest Posts"
---
See what I've written lately.

header replaces the big heading on the list page while title is still used in the browser tab. The text below the front matter appears under the heading. Lists are split into pages with Newer posts and Older posts buttons; set the page size with pagerSize in Configuration.

The home page

The home page shows the title and text of content/_index.md, followed by your latest posts. The text is the place for a short introduction:

---
title: "Ahoy There!"
---
I write about robots, research and the tools I use every day.

Posts are taken from content/posts/. Two settings in params.toml change what happens below the introduction:

Setting	Home page shows
Neither (default)	The newest posts, as many as `pagerSize`. Older posts continues on the second page of `/posts/`.
`homePagination = true`	The whole blog, with its own Newer posts and Older posts buttons.
`isSinglePage = true`	Only the introduction. Link to `/posts/` from the main menu instead.

Standalone pages

Any Markdown file directly in content/ becomes a page with its own address. For example, content/about.md is published at /about/. Pages without a date hide the date and reading time, which suits pages like About or Contact. Link to them from the main menu.

The 404 page

Visitors who follow a broken link see a short “Page not found” message with your header and footer around it. Its text comes from the 404_title and 404_text translations; see Translations to change it.