Blogging setup with org mode and Hugo

Ox-Hugo?

With the start of this year, I decided to migrate my blogging framework to Hugo. I have always used EMACS org-mode for blogging. I am using the doom configuration for emacs. We will be using the package ox-hugo for this configuration. ox-hugo is responsible for exporting the org contents from a file to markdown(default file modes for hugo). Awesome package available here: https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/doc/installation/

How?

Let’s enable ox-hugo package. Open the doom emacs configuration folder, I use <leader> f p, this opens all of my private doom configuration. In the init.el file enable hugo in the org module like this:

(org +hugo)

Also, you will have to set the org-hugo-base-dir- variable in the ~config.el file, this is the root of your hugo project.

(setq org-hugo-base-dir "~/projects/mine/portfolio")

Reload your doom configuration with C-c h r r this runs the doom sync shell command.

That is all you have to do. Move into your hugo repository and create a new file in the orgs folder. My portfolio folder looks like this:

| ../ |              |   |      |
| ├── | archetypes   |   |      |
| ├── | assets       |   |      |
| ├── | content      |   |      |
| ├── | data         |   |      |
| ├── | hugo.toml    |   |      |
| ├── | i18n         |   |      |
| ├── | layouts      |   |      |
| ├── | orgs         |   |      |
| ├── | resources    |   |      |
| ├── | static       |   |      |
| └── | themes       |   |      |
|     |              |   |      |
| 10  | directories, | 1 | file |

Create a new blog post file inside the org mode file. Something like this: 2024-1-17-blogging-setup-with-hugo.org Hugo needs some headers in the markdown file that is the output we get after ox-hugo export from the org mode. For, that let’s add a snippet in org mode to auto-populate the snippet so that we won’t have to write the whole headers everytime we start a new blog post. Create new snippet with this C-c & C-n and create the snippet.

# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name: hugohead
# uuid: hugohead
# key: hugohead
# condition: t
# --

#+TITLE: $1
#+DESCRIPTION: $2
#+AUTHOR: neymarsabin
#+HUGO_FRONT_MATTER_KEY_REPLACE: author>authors
#+DATE: $3
#+DRAFT: false

After I finish writing the blog post, I do C-c C-e and this opens up the org export menu. Press H h. This will export the org file to markdown. If you have started the hugo server, you will see your blog post.

Pro config:

I will be adding some configs later to do the followings:

  • add a new menu in the export menu that will export the markdown and ask user to input a commit message, push the code to the remote repository
  • auto export org to md after file is saved, because right now we have to export everytime we save changes in the org file

Gotos: