Hugo Basics You’ll Use Every Week

Colin Blackman

A quick reference you’ll use constantly:

New content

hugo new posts/my-next-post.md
  • Edit the file under content/posts/…
  • Set draft: false to publish.

Local preview

hugo server -D
  • -D shows drafts.
  • Live-reload updates as you edit.

Front matter fields

  • title, date, draft, description, tags, categories.
  • Add slug to customize the URL.

Static files

Anything in /static is served at the site root. Put images, favicons, etc. there.

Shortcodes

Hugo shortcodes let you embed components inside Markdown. For example:

{</* youtube w7Ft2ymGmfc */>}

Check your theme docs for more.

Build

hugo

Outputs static files into /public for deployment.

Pro-tip: PR previews

Open a pull request for big posts. Cloudflare Pages will create a preview URL so collaborators can review before it goes live.