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What's on this Page

  • List of content formats
  • External Helpers
  • Learn Markdown
CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Content Formats

Both HTML and Markdown are supported content formats.

You can put any file type into your /content directories, but Hugo uses the markup front matter value if set or the file extension (see Markup identifiers in the table below) to determine if the markup needs to be processed, e.g.:

  • Markdown converted to HTML
  • Shortcodes processed
  • Layout applied

List of content formats

The current list of content formats in Hugo:

NameMarkup identifiersComment
Goldmarkmd, markdown, goldmarkNote that you can set the default handler of md and markdown to something else, see Configure Markup.
Emacs Org-ModeorgSee go-org.
AsciiDocasciidocext, adoc, adNeeds Asciidoctor installed.
RSTrstNeeds RST installed.
Pandocpandoc, pdcNeeds Pandoc installed.
HTMLhtml, htmTo be treated as a content file, with layout, shortcodes etc., it must have front matter. If not, it will be copied as-is.

The markup identifier is fetched from either the markup variable in front matter or from the file extension. For markup-related configuration, see Configure Markup.

External Helpers

Some of the formats in the table above need external helpers installed on your PC. For example, for AsciiDoc files, Hugo will try to call the asciidoctor command. This means that you will have to install the associated tool on your machine to be able to use these formats.

Hugo passes reasonable default arguments to these external helpers by default:

  • asciidoctor: --no-header-footer -
  • rst2html: --leave-comments --initial-header-level=2
  • pandoc: --mathjax

Because additional formats are external commands, generation performance will rely heavily on the performance of the external tool you are using. As this feature is still in its infancy, feedback is welcome.

External Helper AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc implementation EOLs in Jan 2020 and is no longer supported. AsciiDoc development is being continued under Asciidoctor. The format AsciiDoc remains of course. Please continue with the implementation Asciidoctor.

External Helper Asciidoctor

The Asciidoctor community offers a wide set of tools for the AsciiDoc format that can be installed additionally to Hugo. See the Asciidoctor docs for installation instructions. Make sure that also all optional extensions like asciidoctor-diagram or asciidoctor-html5s are installed if required.

External asciidoctor command requires Hugo rendering to disk to a specific destination directory. It is required to run Hugo with the command option --destination.

Some Asciidoctor parameters can be customized in Hugo:

ParameterComment
backendDon’t change this unless you know what you are doing.
doctypeCurrently, the only document type supported in Hugo is article.
extensionsPossible extensions are asciidoctor-html5s, asciidoctor-bibtex, asciidoctor-diagram, asciidoctor-interdoc-reftext, asciidoctor-katex, asciidoctor-latex, asciidoctor-mathematical, asciidoctor-question, asciidoctor-rouge.
attributesVariables to be referenced in your AsciiDoc file. This is a list of variable name/value maps. See Asciidoctor’s attributes.
noHeaderOrFooterOutput an embeddable document, which excludes the header, the footer, and everything outside the body of the document. Don’t change this unless you know what you are doing.
safeModeSafe mode level unsafe, safe, server or secure. Don’t change this unless you know what you are doing.
sectionNumbersAuto-number section titles.
verboseVerbosely print processing information and configuration file checks to stderr.
traceInclude backtrace information on errors.
failureLevelThe minimum logging level that triggers a non-zero exit code (failure).

Hugo provides additional settings that don’t map directly to Asciidoctor’s CLI options:

workingFolderCurrent
Sets the working directory to be the same as that of the AsciiDoc file being processed, so that include will work with relative paths. This setting uses the asciidoctor cli parameter --base-dir and attribute outdir=. For rendering diagrams with asciidoctor-diagram, workingFolderCurrent must be set to true.
preserveTOC
By default, Hugo removes the table of contents generated by Asciidoctor and provides it through the built-in variable .TableOfContents to enable further customization and better integration with the various Hugo themes. This option can be set to true to preserve Asciidoctor’s TOC in the generated page.

Below are all the AsciiDoc related settings in Hugo with their default values:

config.
     
markup:
  asciidocExt:
    attributes: {}
    backend: html5
    extensions: []
    failureLevel: fatal
    noHeaderOrFooter: true
    preserveTOC: false
    safeMode: unsafe
    sectionNumbers: false
    trace: false
    verbose: false
    workingFolderCurrent: false
[markup]
  [markup.asciidocExt]
    backend = 'html5'
    extensions = []
    failureLevel = 'fatal'
    noHeaderOrFooter = true
    preserveTOC = false
    safeMode = 'unsafe'
    sectionNumbers = false
    trace = false
    verbose = false
    workingFolderCurrent = false
    [markup.asciidocExt.attributes]
{
   "markup": {
      "asciidocExt": {
         "attributes": {},
         "backend": "html5",
         "extensions": [],
         "failureLevel": "fatal",
         "noHeaderOrFooter": true,
         "preserveTOC": false,
         "safeMode": "unsafe",
         "sectionNumbers": false,
         "trace": false,
         "verbose": false,
         "workingFolderCurrent": false
      }
   }
}

Notice that for security concerns only extensions that do not have path separators (either \, / or .) are allowed. That means that extensions can only be invoked if they are in one’s ruby’s $LOAD_PATH (ie. most likely, the extension has been installed by the user). Any extension declared relative to the website’s path will not be accepted.

Example of how to set extensions and attributes:

[markup.asciidocExt]
    extensions = ["asciidoctor-html5s", "asciidoctor-diagram"]
    workingFolderCurrent = true
    [markup.asciidocExt.attributes]
        my-base-url = "https://example.com/"
        my-attribute-name = "my value"

In a complex Asciidoctor environment it is sometimes helpful to debug the exact call to your external helper with all parameters. Run Hugo with -v. You will get an output like

INFO 2019/12/22 09:08:48 Rendering book-as-pdf.adoc with C:\Ruby26-x64\bin\asciidoctor.bat using asciidoc args [--no-header-footer -r asciidoctor-html5s -b html5s -r asciidoctor-diagram --base-dir D:\prototypes\hugo_asciidoc_ddd\docs -a outdir=D:\prototypes\hugo_asciidoc_ddd\build -] ...

Learn Markdown

Markdown syntax is simple enough to learn in a single sitting. The following are excellent resources to get you up and running:

  • Daring Fireball: Markdown, John Gruber (Creator of Markdown)
  • Markdown Cheatsheet, Adam Pritchard
  • Markdown Tutorial (Interactive), Garen Torikian
  • The Markdown Guide, Matt Cone

See Also

  • .RenderString
  • anchorize
  • Markdown Render Hooks
  • Shortcodes
  • markdownify
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Last updated: November 16, 2022: Fix page weights in content management section (#1896) (32cb8785)
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