hugo/content/en/content-management/summaries.md

title	linktitle	description	date	publishdate	lastmod	categories	keywords	menu	weight	draft	aliases	toc
Content Summaries	Summaries	Hugo generates summaries of your content.	2017-01-10	2017-01-10	2017-01-10	content management	summaries abstracts read more	docs parent weight content-management 90	90	false	/content/summaries/ /content-management/content-summaries/	true

With the use of the .Summary page variable, Hugo generates summaries of content to use as a short version in summary views.

Summary Splitting Options

• Automatic Summary Split
• Manual Summary Split

It is natural to accompany the summary with links to the original content, and a common design pattern is to see this link in the form of a "Read More ..." button. See the .RelPermalink, .Permalink, and .Truncated page variables.

Automatic Summary Splitting

By default, Hugo automatically takes the first 70 words of your content as its summary and stores it into the .Summary page variable for use in your templates. You may customize the summary length by setting summaryLength in your site configuration.

{{% note %}} You can customize how HTML tags in the summary are loaded using functions such as plainify and safeHTML. {{% /note %}}

{{% note %}} The Hugo-defined summaries are set to use word count calculated by splitting the text by one or more consecutive whitespace characters. If you are creating content in a CJK language and want to use Hugo's automatic summary splitting, set hasCJKLanguage to true in your site configuration. {{% /note %}}

Manual Summary Splitting

Alternatively, you may add the <!--more--> summary divider where you want to split the article.

For Org mode content, use # more where you want to split the article.

Content that comes before the summary divider will be used as that content's summary and stored in the .Summary page variable with all HTML formatting intact.

{{% note "Summary Divider"%}} The concept of a summary divider is not unique to Hugo. It is also called the "more tag" or "excerpt separator" in other literature. {{% /note %}}

Pros

Freedom, precision, and improved rendering. All HTML tags and formatting are preserved.

Cons

Extra work for content authors, since they need to remember to type <!--more--> (or # more for org content) in each content file. This can be automated by adding the summary divider below the front matter of an archetype.

{{% warning "Be Precise with the Summary Divider" %}} Be careful to enter <!--more--> exactly; i.e., all lowercase and with no whitespace. {{% /warning %}}

Example: First 10 Articles with Summaries

You can show content summaries with the following code. You could use the following snippet, for example, in a section template.

{{< code file="page-list-with-summaries.html" >}} {{ range first 10 .Pages }}

{{ .Title }}

{{ .Summary }}

{{ if .Truncated }}

Read More…

{{ end }}

{{ end }} {{< /code >}}

Note how the .Truncated boolean valuable may be used to hide the "Read More..." link when the content is not truncated; i.e., when the summary contains the entire article.