Utility Pages

Overview

An utility page is any Markdown file (.md) that has layout = utility in the frontmatter.

This layout is specifically created for pages like About, Policy, Contact, and other administrative or informational pages.

Its purpose is to make “utility pages” feel almost hardcoded, fully integrated into the theme while remaining completely manageable through content files.

Creation

Create a utility page with all supported frontmatter using:

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

Or as a page bundle:

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

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

Layout

The utility layout is a stripped down variant of the page layout, designed for maximum simplicity.

Its main goal is to create a subtle visual distinction between “utility pages” and regular content.

Frontmatter

A page created with the --kind utility flag includes the following frontmatter:

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

# Dates
date = "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00"
lastmod = ""
show_date = false

# Publication Control
draft = false
layout = "utility"

# 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.

Dates

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.

show_date

show_date = false — (boolean, optional)

Display the publication date.

Useful for transparency on pages like Policy, where versioning matters.

Default: false

Publication Control

draft

draft = false — (boolean, optional)

Marks the page as a draft if true.

Default: false.

layout

layout = "utility" — (string, optional)

Forces Hugo to use Alpha’s utility 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.