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:

+++
draft = false
date = "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00"
lastmod = ""
layout = "story"

title = "Example page title"
author = ""
license = ""
series = ""
  parts = ""
  weight = 1000
dropcap = false
categories = []
tags = []

recommended = false
featured = false
description = ""
+++

Reference¹

draft

draft = false — (boolean, optional)

Marks the page as a draft if true.

Default: false.

date

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

Displayed on the page and used for 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. Displayed on the page and used in metadata.

Use the same format as date.

layout

layout = "story" — (string, optional)

Forces Hugo to use Alpha’s story layout.

This is required to enable the layout.

title

title = "" — (string, recommended)

Sets the page title and populates metadata.

OCD error if omitted.

Default: Automatically filled at creation.

author

author = "" — (string, optional)

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

license

license = "" — (string, optional)

Adds a license notice for the pages 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.

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 = 1000 — (integer, optional)

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

Default: 1000

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: false

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"]

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.

Default: false

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.

Default: false

description

description = "" — (string, recommended)

A short description for metadata.

For best SEO, keep it between 50–160 characters.

OCD warning if omitted.