ox-hugo is “an Org exporter backend that exports Org to Hugo-compatible Markdown (Blackfriday) and also generates the front-matter (in TOML or YAML format).”

It’s more fun than it sounds.

I’ve used ox-hugo before, but I end up either drifting away from Org mode and/or Hugo and forget what a powerful combination ox-hugo, Org mode, and Hugo can be.

The great thing is that I have all my posts in a single Org file, each as its own heading. Each heading is rendered as individual Markdown files with Hugo-compatible frontmatter.

A few highlights:

  • I use an org timestamp for the entry date and add posts.org to my agenda files so I see what I posted on a given day in my org agenda.
  • I have a yasnippet that helps me fill in the post metadata
  • Posts are rendered automatically when saving via local variable: # eval: (org-hugo-auto-export-mode)

The posts.org frontmatter looks like this…

#+hugo_base_dir: ../
#+hugo_section: ./

#+hugo_weight: auto
#+hugo_auto_set_lastmod: t
#+hugo_front_matter_format: yaml
#+hugo_front_matter_key_replace: description>summary author>nil
#+category: blog

And then an individual post heading looks like this…

DONE I forget how fun ox-hugo is :@Meta:hugo:orgmode:
:PROPERTIES:
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: i-forget-how-fun-ox-hugo-is
:EXPORT_DATE: <2021-05-25 Tue>
:ID:       3942bdfb-50c1-41d1-be0b-eec21b615047
:END:

Here’s the (ya)snippet:

# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name: Hugo
# key: hugo
# uuid: hugo
# --
TODO ${1:title}
:PROPERTIES:
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: ${1:$(replace-regexp-in-string " " "-" (downcase yas-text))}
:EXPORT_DATE:
:END:

$0

And here’s what the org document looks like in Emacs.