hugo/content/getting-started/configuration.md

title	linktitle	description	date	publishdate	lastmod	categories	menu	weight	sections_weight	draft	aliases	toc
Configure Hugo	Configuration	Often the default settings are good enough, but the config file can provide highly granular control over how your site is rendered.	2013-07-01	2017-01-02	2017-03-05	getting started fundamentals	docs parent weight getting-started 60	60	60	false	/overview/source-directory/ /overview/configuration/	true

The directory structure of a Hugo website—or more precisely, the source organization of files containing the website's content and templates—provides most of the configuration information that Hugo needs in order to generate a finished website.

Because of Hugo's sensible defaults, many websites may not need a configuration file. Hugo is designed to recognize certain typical usage patterns.

Configuration Lookup Order

Similar to the template lookup order, Hugo has a default set of rules for searching for a configuration file in the root of your website's source directory as a default behavior:

1. ./config.toml
2. ./config.yaml
3. ./config.json

In your config file, you can direct Hugo as to how you want your website rendered, control your website's menus, and arbitrarily define site-wide parameters specific to your project.

YAML Configuration

The following is a typical example of a YAML configuration file. Note the document opens with 3 hyphens and closes with 3 periods. The values nested under params: will populate the .Site.Params variable for use in templates:

{{< code file="config.yml">}}

baseURL: "https://yoursite.example.com/" title: "My Hugo Site" footnoteReturnLinkContents: "↩" permalinks: post: /:year/:month/:title/ params: Subtitle: "Hugo is Absurdly Fast!" AuthorName: "Jon Doe" GitHubUser: "spf13" ListOfFoo: - "foo1" - "foo2" SidebarRecentLimit: 5 ... {{< /code >}}

All Variables, YAML

The following is the full list of Hugo-defined variables in an example YAML file. The values provided in this example represent the default values used by Hugo.

{{< code file="config.yml" download="config.yml" >}}

archetypeDir: "archetypes"

hostname (and path) to the root, e.g. http://spf13.com/

baseURL: ""

include content marked as draft

buildDrafts: false

include content with publishdate in the future

buildFuture: false

include content already expired

buildExpired: false

enable this to make all relative URLs relative to content root. Note that this does not affect absolute URLs. See the "URL Management" page

relativeURLs: false canonifyURLs: false

config file (default is path/config.yaml|json|toml)

config: "config.toml" contentDir: "content" dataDir: "data" defaultExtension: "html" defaultLayout: "post"

Missing translations will default to this content language

defaultContentLanguage: "en"

Renders the default content language in subdir, e.g. /en/. The root directory / will redirect to /en/

defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: false disableLiveReload: false

Do not build RSS files

disableRSS: false

Do not build Sitemap file

disableSitemap: false

Enable GitInfo feature

enableGitInfo: false

Build robots.txt file

enableRobotsTXT: false

Do not render 404 page

disable404: false

Do not inject generator meta tag on homepage

disableHugoGeneratorInject: false

Allows you to disable all page types and will render nothing related to 'kind';

values = "page", "home", "section", "taxonomy", "taxonomyTerm", "RSS", "sitemap", "robotsTXT", "404"

disableKinds: []

Do not make the url/path to lowercase

disablePathToLower: false ""

Enable Emoji emoticons support for page content; see emoji-cheat-sheet.com

enableEmoji: false

Show a placeholder instead of the default value or an empty string if a translation is missing

enableMissingTranslationPlaceholders: false footnoteAnchorPrefix: "" footnoteReturnLinkContents: ""

google analytics tracking id

googleAnalytics: ""

if true, auto-detect Chinese/Japanese/Korean Languages in the content. (.Summary and .WordCount can work properly in CJKLanguage)

hasCJKLanguage: false languageCode: "" layoutDir: "layouts"

Enable Logging

log: false

Log File path (if set, logging enabled automatically)

logFile: ""

"toml","yaml", or "json"

metaDataFormat: "toml" newContentEditor: ""

Don't sync permission mode of files

noChmod: false

Don't sync modification time of files

noTimes: false

Pagination

paginate: 10 paginatePath: "page"

See "content-management/permalinks"

permalinks:

Pluralize titles in lists using inflect

pluralizeListTitles: true

Preserve special characters in taxonomy names ("Gérard Depardieu" vs "Gerard Depardieu")

preserveTaxonomyNames: false

filesystem path to write files to

publishDir: "public"

enables syntax guessing for code fences without specified language

pygmentsCodeFencesGuessSyntax: false

color-codes for highlighting derived from this style

pygmentsStyle: "monokai"

true use pygments-css or false will color code directly

pygmentsUseClasses: false

maximum number of items in the RSS feed

rssLimit: 15

see "Section Menu for Lazy Bloggers", /templates/menu-templates for more info

SectionPagesMenu: ""

default sitemap configuration map

sitemap:

filesystem path to read files relative from

source: "" staticDir: "static"

display memory and timing of different steps of the program

stepAnalysis: false

theme to use (located by default in /themes/THEMENAME/)

themesDir: "themes" theme: "" title: ""

Title Case style guide for the title func and other automatic title casing in Hugo.

// Valid values are "AP" (default), "Chicago" and "Go" (which was what you had in Hugo <= 0.25.1). // See https://www.apstylebook.com/ and http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html titleCaseStyle: "AP"

if true, use /filename.html instead of /filename/

uglyURLs: false

verbose output

verbose: false

verbose logging

verboseLog: false

watch filesystem for changes and recreate as needed

watch: true taxonomies:

• category: "categories"
• tag: "tags"

---

{{< /code >}}

TOML Configuration

The following is an example of a TOML configuration file. The values under [params] will populate the .Site.Params variable for use in templates:

contentDir = "content"
layoutDir = "layouts"
publishDir = "public"
buildDrafts = false
baseURL = "https://yoursite.example.com/"
canonifyURLs = true
title = "My Hugo Site"

[taxonomies]
  category = "categories"
  tag = "tags"

[params]
  subtitle = "Hugo is Absurdly Fast!"
  author = "John Doe"

All Variables, TOML

The following is the full list of Hugo-defined variables in an example TOML file. The values provided in this example represent the default values used by Hugo.

{{< code file="config.toml" download="config.toml">}} +++ archetypeDir = "archetypes"

hostname (and path) to the root, e.g. http://spf13.com/

baseURL = ""

include content marked as draft

buildDrafts = false

include content with publishdate in the future

buildFuture = false

include content already expired

buildExpired = false

enable this to make all relative URLs relative to content root. Note that this does not affect absolute URLs.

relativeURLs = false canonifyURLs = false

config file (default is path/config.yaml|json|toml)

config = "config.toml" contentDir = "content" dataDir = "data" defaultExtension = "html" defaultLayout = "post"

Missing translations will default to this content language

defaultContentLanguage = "en"

Renders the default content language in subdir, e.g. /en/. The root directory / will redirect to /en/

defaultContentLanguageInSubdir = false disableLiveReload = false

Do not build RSS files

disableRSS = false

Do not build Sitemap file

disableSitemap = false

Enable GitInfo feature

enableGitInfo = false

Build robots.txt file

enableRobotsTXT = false

Do not render 404 page

disable404 = false

Do not inject generator meta tag on homepage

disableHugoGeneratorInject = false

Allows you to disable all page types and will render nothing related to 'kind';

values = "page", "home", "section", "taxonomy", "taxonomyTerm", "RSS", "sitemap", "robotsTXT", "404"

disableKinds = []

Do not make the url/path to lowercase

disablePathToLower = false

Enable Emoji emoticons support for page content; see emoji-cheat-sheet.com

enableEmoji = false

Show a placeholder instead of the default value or an empty string if a translation is missing

enableMissingTranslationPlaceholders = false footnoteAnchorPrefix = "" footnoteReturnLinkContents = ""

google analytics tracking id

googleAnalytics = ""

if true, auto-detect Chinese/Japanese/Korean Languages in the content. (.Summary and .WordCount can work properly in CJKLanguage)

hasCJKLanguage = false languageCode = "" layoutDir = "layouts"

Enable Logging

log = false

Log File path (if set, logging enabled automatically)

logFile =

maximum number of items in the RSS feed

rssLimit = 15

"toml","yaml", or "json"

metaDataFormat = "toml" newContentEditor = ""

Don't sync permission mode of files

noChmod = false

Don't sync modification time of files

noTimes = false

Pagination

paginate = 10 paginatePath = "page"

See "content-management/permalinks"

permalinks =

Pluralize titles in lists using inflect

pluralizeListTitles = true

Preserve special characters in taxonomy names ("Gérard Depardieu" vs "Gerard Depardieu")

preserveTaxonomyNames = false

filesystem path to write files to

publishDir = "public"

enables syntax guessing for code fences without specified language

pygmentsCodeFencesGuessSyntax = false

color-codes for highlighting derived from this style

pygmentsStyle = "monokai"

true: use pygments-css or false: color-codes directly

pygmentsUseClasses = false

see "Section Menu for Lazy Bloggers", /templates/menu-templates for more info

SectionPagesMenu =

default sitemap configuration map

sitemap =

filesystem path to read files relative from

source = "" staticDir = "static"

display memory and timing of different steps of the program

stepAnalysis = false

theme to use (located by default in /themes/THEMENAME/)

themesDir = "themes" theme = "" title = ""

if true, use /filename.html instead of /filename/

uglyURLs = false

verbose output

verbose = false

verbose logging

verboseLog = false

watch filesystem for changes and recreate as needed

watch = true [taxonomies] category = "categories" tag = "tags" +++ {{< /code >}}

{{% note %}} If you are developing your site on a *nix machine, here is a handy shortcut for finding a configuration option from the command line:

~/sites/yourhugosite
hugo config | grep emoji
enableemoji: true

{{% /note %}}

Environmental Variables

In addition to the 3 config options already mentioned, configuration key-values can be defined through operating system environment variables.

For example, the following command will effectively set a website's title on Unix-like systems:

$ env HUGO_TITLE="Some Title" hugo

{{% note "Setting Environment Variables" %}} Names must be prefixed with HUGO_ and the configuration key must be set in uppercase when setting operating system environment variables. {{% /note %}}

Ignore Files When Rendering

The following statement inside ./config.toml will cause Hugo to ignore files ending with .foo and .boo when rendering:

ignoreFiles = [ "\\.foo$", "\\.boo$" ]

The above is a list of regular expressions. Note that the backslash (\) character is escaped in this example to keep TOML happy.

Configure Blackfriday

Blackfriday is Hugo's built-in Markdown rendering engine.

Hugo typically configures Blackfriday with sane default values that should fit most use cases reasonably well.

However, if you have specific needs with respect to Markdown, Hugo exposes some of its Blackfriday behavior options for you to alter. The following table lists these Hugo options, paired with the corresponding flags from Blackfriday's source code ( html.go and markdown.go).

{{< readfile file="/content/readfiles/bfconfig.md" markdown="true" >}}

{{% note %}}

1. Blackfriday flags are case sensitive as of Hugo v0.15.
2. Blackfriday flags must be grouped under the blackfriday key and can be set on both the site level and the page level. Any setting on a page will override its respective site setting. {{% /note %}}

{{< code file="bf-config.toml" >}} [blackfriday] angledQuotes = true fractions = false plainIDAnchors = true extensions = ["hardLineBreak"] {{< /code >}}

{{< code file="bf-config.yml" >}} blackfriday: angledQuotes: true fractions: false plainIDAnchors: true extensions: - hardLineBreak {{< /code >}}

Configure Additional Output Formats

Hugo v0.20 introduced the ability to render your content to multiple output formats (e.g., to JSON, AMP html, or CSV). See Output Formats for information on how to add these values to your Hugo project's configuration file.

Configuration Format Specs

• TOML Spec
• YAML Spec
• JSON Spec