First post with Hugo
In the root folder, execute command
hugo new content content/posts/my-first-post.md
This will create a new markdown file in the content/posts directory with the name my-first-post.md. The file will contain some default front matter, which you can edit to include your desired title, date, and other metadata.
---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2026-03-10T21:20:12+01:00
draft: true
---
The metadata are intoduced in Hugo as “front matter”. The title field specifies the title of the post, the date field indicates when the post was created, and the draft field is set to true, which means that the post will not be published until you change it to false. More information about front matter can be found in the Hugo documentation.
Quick review of the post content
Execute the command
hugo server -D
Then open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:1313/. You should see your new post listed on the homepage. Click on the post title to view the full content of the post. Since the draft field is set to true, the post will not be visible on the public site until you change it to false and rebuild your site.
Publish the post
To publish the post, open the my-first-post.md file and change the draft field from true to false. Then save the file and rebuild your site by running the command:
hugo
After rebuilding, your post will be published and visible on the public site. You can verify this by navigating to http://localhost:1313/ again and checking that your post is now listed on the homepage.