What is frontmatter?
Frontmatter is a YAML block at the top of each .md file between ---. Hugo reads it and makes it available in templates via .Params and built-in fields.
---
title: "Title" # built-in field → .Title
date: 2026-04-11 # built-in field → .Date
my_param: "value" # custom → .Params.my_param
---
Built-in Hugo fields (all content types)
| Field | Type | Template access | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
title | string | .Title | Page title. Used in <title>, h1, breadcrumb, cards |
date | date | .Date | Publication date. Format: 2026-04-11. Affects sorting |
description | string | .Description | Meta description. Used in <meta description> and card previews |
draft | bool | .Draft | true — page not published with hugo (only with hugo -D) |
tags | []string | .Params.tags | Tags. Create pages at /tags/{tag-name}/ |
categories | []string | .Params.categories | Categories. Create pages at /categories/{name}/ |
weight | int | .Weight | Manual sort order (lower = higher) |
Fields for posts (content/posts/*.md)
Used in templates
| Field | Type | Required | Used in | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
title | string | yes | h1, card, ToC | Article title |
date | date | yes | card, sorting | Publication date |
description | string | recommended | meta, card, cert-page | Short description (1-2 sentences) |
tags | []string | recommended | post-meta, filters, /tags/ | Article tags |
categories | []string | no | filter in certs/single.html | Category (e.g. “LPIC-2”) |
readingtime | int | no | .post-meta in single.html | Reading time in minutes |
Example for an LPIC-2 article
---
title: "LPIC-2 200.1 — Measuring and Diagnosing Resource Usage"
date: 2026-04-10
description: "CPU, memory, disk I/O monitoring: top, vmstat, iostat, sar. LPIC-2 topic 200.1."
tags: ["Linux", "Performance", "LPIC-2", "Monitoring"]
categories: ["LPIC-2"]
---
How description is used in different places
| Location | Template | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Page meta tag | baseof.html | .Description or .Site.Params.description |
| Card in listing | list.html | .Description → if absent, .Summary (first 120 chars) |
| Link in cert accordion | certs/single.html | .Description below the title |
| Pagefind search result | Pagefind | excerpt from page content |
Fields for cert pages (content/certs/*.md)
These are custom fields, read via .Params.* in certs/single.html.
| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
title | string | yes | Cert name (e.g. “LPIC-2”) |
cert_badge | string | yes | Emoji icon (e.g. “🖥️”) |
cert_color | string | yes | CSS color (hex). Used for --cert-color and border |
description | string | yes | Subtitle in hero block |
post_prefix | string | yes | Prefix for matching posts by slug (e.g. "lpic2") |
exams | []Exam | no | List of exams with topics. Without it — “coming soon” page |
exams structure
exams:
- code: "201" # Exam code (string)
title: "Advanced Linux" # Exam name
topics:
- num: "200" # Topic number (string!)
title: "Capacity Planning"
- num: "201"
title: "Linux Kernel"
Important:
nummust be a string (without quotes YAML may interpret it as int). In the template it is used to build a pattern:"{post_prefix}-{num}-".
How post_prefix links posts to topics
post_prefix = "lpic2"
topic.num = "200"
──────────────────────────────────────────────
Pattern: "lpic2-200-"
Matches: lpic2-200-1-capacity-planning.md ✓
lpic2-200-2-predict-future.md ✓
No match: lpic2-201-1-kernel.md ✗
This means the article file’s slug determines which topic it belongs to.
Fields for the About page (content/about.md)
about.md uses no custom frontmatter fields — profile data (name, links) comes from hugo.toml [params].
---
title: "About"
date: 2026-04-01
---
The .md body is rendered into .prose in about/single.html.
Fields for documentation (content/docs/*.md)
---
title: "Page title"
date: 2026-04-11
description: "Description for meta"
page_lang: "en"
lang_pair: "/docs/ru/frontmatter/"
tags: ["docs"]
---
Uses the standard _default/single.html with ToC sidebar.
Global site parameters (hugo.toml [params])
Available in templates as .Site.Params.*:
| Parameter | Access | Used in |
|---|---|---|
author | .Site.Params.author | about/single.html → .about-name |
description | .Site.Params.description | baseof.html → <meta description> fallback |
location | .Site.Params.location | about/single.html, footer |
github | .Site.Params.github | about/single.html → GH link |
linkedin | .Site.Params.linkedin | about/single.html → LinkedIn link |
telegram | .Site.Params.telegram | about/single.html → Telegram link |