Frequently Asked Questions

I can’t see my content!

Is your markdown file in draft mode? When testing, run hugo server with the -D or --buildDrafts switch.

Can I set configuration variables via OS environment?

Yes you can! See Configure with Environment Variables.

How do I schedule posts?

1. Set publishDate in the page Front Matter to a datetime in the future. If you want the creation and publication datetime to be the same, it’s also sufficient to only set date¹.
2. Build and publish at intervals.

How to automate the “publish at intervals” part depends on your situation:

• If you deploy from your own PC/server, you can automate with Cron or similar.
• If your site is hosted on a service similar to Netlify you can use a service such as ifttt to schedule the updates.

Also see this Twitter thread:

@GoHugoIO Converted https://t.co/icCzS7Ha7q from @Medium to Hugo yesterday. Once I figure out how to do scheduled posts I will be ecstatic.

— Chris Short 💉💉💉 (@ChrisShort) February 10, 2018

Can I use the latest Hugo version on Netlify?

Yes you can! Read this.

I get “… this feature is not available in your current Hugo version”

If you process SCSS or SASS to CSS in your Hugo project with libsass as the transpiler or if you convert images to the webp format, you need the Hugo extended version, or else you may see an error message similar to the below:

error: failed to transform resource: TOCSS: failed to transform "scss/main.scss" (text/x-scss): this feature is not available in your current Hugo version

We release two set of binaries for technical reasons. The extended version is not what you get by default for some installation methods. On the release page, look for archives with extended in the name. To build hugo-extended, use go install --tags extended

To confirm, run hugo version and look for the word extended.

Do I need to install Git to create, deploy, and maintain a website with Hugo?

Technically, no.

Practically, yes.

• The primary installation method documented by most (perhaps all) themes is via Git or the Hugo Modules feature.
• The Hugo Modules feature requires Go, and Go “gets” with Git.
• A Git repository is required by CI/CD hosting (Bitbucket, Cloudflare, GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Netlify, et. al.).
• The canonical “last modified” date for content is its Git committer date; using anything else is error-prone.