When you create a new post using the hugo new command, the generated markdown file will already contain the predefined front matter.
Supposing you created a post called newpost.md on Mar. 9th, 2020, the front matter will look like:
+++
title = "newpost"
date = 2020-03-09T14:06:22+09:00
publishDate = 2020-03-09T14:06:22+09:00
categories = ""
##ex: categories = "event"##
## for categ. event : remove "#" following 2 columns. ##
#eventStartDate = 2020-03-09
#eventEndDate = 2020-03-09
tags = [""]
##ex: tags = ["Seminar","Conference"]##
image = ""
###banner####
mkbanner = false
bannerEndDate = 2020-04-09
bannerimg = ""
weight = 3
#For main menu contents
#mktile false
#For Local
draft = false
+++
In this part, you can set when and how you want this entry to be displayed. The following variables are defined.
Title of the post
The variable title will be set to the name of the markdown file by default, but can also be customized. The default title of this page was front_matter, but it has been changed to Front matter parameters.
Date variables
date & publishDate
These will be set to the date and time of creation of the entry. See the HUGO Website for the descriptions of these predefined date variables.
eventStartDate & eventEndDate
These are variables exclusively used for date-dependent contents. By setting these values, you can set the time period when this entry appears on the top page. For example, if you want to tell everyone about a conference that is held from March 9, 2020 till March 11, 2020, you can set
eventStartDate = 2020-03-09
eventEndDate = 2020-03-11
so that it will be announced as one of the Upcoming events on the top page until it ends. After it has ended, it will disappear from the Upcoming events area.
bannerEndDate
This is a variable exclusively used for fixed banners on the infobar. See below for the usage.
Taxonomies
You can attach tags to your post to organize them into groups. Suppose you hold a conference once a month, and you hold a seminar once a week. By setting
tags = ["Conference"]
to the former and
tags = ["Seminar"]
to the latter, you can find out about the conferences by just clicking on the Conference tag, without having to sort out the more frequent seminars. See also Tags.
The variable categories is currently not used.
The image variable
You can set an image that represents the content by using the variable image. There are two cases where the image set here can be used.
As the image for a tilelist
When the page is displayed as a tilelist, it will need a representative image. The link to the image given to this variable will be used.
As the background image of a banner
If the page is listed on the infobar, it will look appealing if it has an image. The recommended variable to be used here will be the bannerimg (see below), but if it is not used, the image given to the image variable will be shown transparently on the background and the date and title of the post will be printed on top.
Displaying your post on the infobar
You can display posts on the infobar by setting
mkbanner = true
so that it will be emphasized to your visitors. When there are multiple mkbanner entries, the order will be determined by weight, and then the date.
The front matter variables related to this are as follows:
bannerEndDate
The post will be displayed on the infobar until the date specified by bannerEndDate, which is set to one month after the date of creation by default.
bannerimg
When a path to the image is given to the bannerimg, the post will show up on the infobar as just the image, without a title or a date. The aspect ratio of 4:3 is recommended for the image used.
If you do not specify the bannerimg, the image specified in image will be used as a background image (see above), and if that is also unspecified, the date and title of the entry will be shown on a white background.
