Story

Overview

A story is any Markdown file that defines layout = "story" in its frontmatter.

Stories mimics the simplicity of a book page, offering a minimal, immersive reading experience. They are ideal for long content like stories, narratives, and any type of creative or reflective writing.

Creation

To create a story with all supported frontmatter keys:

hugo new content --kind story [path]/[filename].md

Or as a page bundle:

hugo new content --kind story [path]/[folder-name]/index.md

Note: If you omit the --kind story flag, Hugo will use the default archetype that create a page with only basic frontmatter keys and you will need to manually add layout = story.

Layout

The story layout visually differs from other Alpha layouts, yet remains consistent with Alpha’s core design principles.

For best aesthetics results, it’s recommended to soft-separate layout types by section (e.g. keep stories under a stories/ section or similar).

Story layout supports:

• Optional decorative dropcap.
• Multipart content with series and parts.
• Display of license and copyright.
• Tags and categories.
• Allows pages to be marked as featured and recommended.

Frontmatter

A story created with the --kind story flag includes the following frontmatter:

+++
# Content Identity
title = "Example story page title"
description = ""

# Authoring
author = ""
date = "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00"
lastmod = ""
license = ""

# Organization
categories = []
tags = []
## Series
series = ""
parts = ""
weight = 0

# Display
dropcap = true
featured = false
recommended = false


# Publication Control
draft = false
layout = "story"

# Advanced SEO
seo_type = ""
seo_image = ""
twitter_username = ""
+++

Reference¹

Content Identity

title

title = "" — (string, recommended)

Sets the page title and populates metadata.

LiVa error if omitted.

Default: Automatically filled at creation.

description

description = "" — (string, recommended)

Short description for SEO and social sharing.

Recommended length: 50–160 characters.

LiVa warning if omitted.

Authoring

author

author = "" — (string, optional)

Name of the author. Used on the page and in metadata.

date

date = "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZHH:MM" — (string, recommended)

Used for SEO metadata and page ordering. Must follow ISO 8601 format.

Hugo error if misconfigured.

Default: Automatically set by Hugo at creation.

lastmod

lastmod = "" — (string, optional)

Sets the last modified date. (used in metadata).

Use the same format as date.

LiVa warning if precedes published date.

license

license = "" — (string, optional)

Adds a license notice for the page’s content.

Only predefined values are supported. Copyrighted content or Creative Common licences

Values: copyright, CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND,CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC-ND.

LiVa warning if value is invalid.

Organization

categories

categories = [] — (array, optional)

Assigns page categories for taxonomy.

Example: categories = ["Docs", "Content"]

tags

tags = [] — (array, optional)

Assigns page tags for taxonomy.

Example: tags = ["writing", "hugo"]

Series

series

series = "" — (string, optional)

Marks the page as part of a series.

Navigation links will appear, if weight is defined.

parts

parts = "" — (string, optional)

Describes this page’s part in a multipart series.

weight

weight = 0 — (integer, optional)

Sets the order of the page within a series. Applies only if series is set.

Default: 0

Display

dropcap

dropcap = true — (boolean, optional)

Adds a large decorative letter to the first paragraph.

Only applies if the first element of the content is a paragraph.

Default: true

featured

featured = false — (boolean, optional)

Mark the page as featured content. Appears in the hamburger menu and at the featured shortcode.

Only the featured page with the latest date will be used.

LiVa error if value is not boolean.

Default: false

recommended

recommended = false — (boolean, optional)

Mark the page as recommended content.

Recommended content will appear after the content of pages and only at the last part of a series.

LiVa error if value is not boolean.

Default: false

Publication Control

draft

draft = false — (boolean, optional)

Marks the page as a draft if true.

Default: false.

layout

layout = "story" — (string, optional)

Forces Hugo to use Alpha’s story layout.

LiVa warning if value is invalid.

Advanced SEO

seo_type

seo_type = "Article" — (string, optional)

Overrides Alpha’s default @type value in schema.org structured data.

Default value: Article

seo_image

seo_image = "filename.png" — (string, optional)

Image shown when sharing the page on social platforms. Recommended size 1200x630px

Place images in assets/img/ folder.

Fall back to seo_default_image from config/_default/params.toml if omitted.

LiVa warns if the file is missing or has incorrect dimensions.

twitter_username

twitter_username = "oxypteros" — (string, optional)

Sets the twitter:creator value in Twitter cards.

Enter the username without the @ symbol.