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:

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

title = "Example page title"

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 = "utility" — (string, optional)

Forces Hugo to use Alpha’s utility layout.

This is required to enable the layout.

show_date

show_date = false — (boolean, optional)

Display the publication date.

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

Default: false

title

title = "" — (string, recommended)

Sets the page title and populates metadata.

OCD error if omitted.

Default: Automatically filled at creation.

description

description = "" — (string, recommended)

A short description for metadata.

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

OCD warning if omitted.