Front matter and SEO

The theme reads a whole set of its own front-matter parameters. Almost every one has a global default in params.yaml and can be overridden per page (or per section via cascade). The resolution order is: front matter → global default → theme fallback.

Front-matter layout #

---
title: "My post"             # read by Hugo
date: 2026-02-16
draft: false
description: "…"
categories: ["Features"]     # taxonomies
tags: ["hugo"]

params:                      # everything theme-specific in this block
  showReadingTime: false
  featureimage: cover.webp
  discovery:
    noindex: true
---

Display toggles #

Boolean toggles - the value shown is the default; set the parameter in your params: block to override it (an explicit false always wins):

params:
  showDate: true            # default: on   publication date in the hero
  showDateUpdated: true     # default: on   "Updated" date from lastmod in the hero
  showReadingTime: true     # default: on   reading time in the meta row
  showWordCount: true       # default: on   word count in the meta row
  showTaxonomies: true      # default: on   tags & categories in the hero
  showTableOfContents: true # default: on   floating table of contents (on the left)
  showHeadingAnchors: true  # default: on   direct-link anchor on every heading
  showAuthor: true          # default: on   author box at the end
  showLikes: false          # default: off  like button (heart) at the end - opt-in
  showSharingLinks: true    # default: on   sharing bar
  showComments: true        # default: on   reactions/comments at the end
  showPagination: true      # default: on   prev/next within the section
  showRelatedContent: true  # default: on   "Related posts" below the article
  showDraftLabel: true      # default: on   "Draft" badge while draft: true
  seriesOpened: true        # default: on   series box starts expanded

Value parameters #

Parameters that take a value rather than a toggle:

params:
  # Show only these networks in the sharing bar (keys from data/sharing.yaml);
  # overrides the global set from params.yaml.
  sharingLinks: ["bluesky", "mastodon", "email"]

  # Number of "Related posts" (default 3) when showRelatedContent is on.
  relatedContentLimit: 5

  # Author name for this page's structured data (Person/JSON-LD) ONLY;
  # overrides the default author from params.yaml.
  author: "Guest author"

Social tags for cross-posting (socialTags) #

socialTags is not a flat list but a block with hashtags and mentions (per network). It is not rendered on the page; it is written into the JSON Feed under a _social extension - from there a cross-posting service picks it up and appends the hashtags and @-mentions when auto-posting to Mastodon or Bluesky.

params:
  socialTags:
    hashtags:
      - SelfHosted
      - DNS
      - PiHole
    mentions:
      mastodon: ["selfhosted@lemmy.world"]
      bluesky: ["mariushosting.com"]

Feature image (featureimage) #

The theme resolves the hero/feature image in this order:

1. params.featureimage (local path or absolute URL),
2. an image named *background*/*feature*/*cover*/*thumbnail* in the bundle,
3. the site’s defaultBackgroundImage from params.yaml.

params:
  featureimage: cover.webp         # image in the post bundle …
  # featureimage: https://…/og.png # … or an absolute URL

The discovery block (crawling, indexing, search) #

For SEO the theme brings its own discovery: block - Hugo has no equivalent. All toggles have a sensible default; you only set the deviation:

params:
  discovery:
    noindex: true   # default false → <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
    nofollow: true  # default false → appends nofollow
    sitemap: false  # default true  → drop the page from sitemap.xml
    search: false   # default true  → drop the page from the Pagefind search
    llms: false     # default true  → drop the page from llms.txt

partials/seo-robots.html is the single source of the robots directive (front matter → 404 → default index, follow); it emits only the opt-out tokens (noindex/nofollow), never the implicit index, follow. The sitemap is coupled to it: any noindex page drops out of the sitemap automatically.

The thin tag term pages set exactly that via a cascade in content/tags/_index.md; the legal pages (see Privacy) combine noindex with search: false + llms: false and outputs: ["HTML"].

Curated tag hubs (linkTitle + discovery) #

A tag term page is thin and noindex by default (the cascade above). To turn a tag into an indexable evergreen hub - a curated landing page that owns the head term while its individual posts keep their long-tails - give the tag its own _index.md under content/tags/<tag>/:

# content/tags/seo/_index.md
---
title: "Search engine optimization"  # page <h1> + SEO title
linkTitle: "seo"                      # short label shown in the tag chips
description: "…"                      # hero lede + meta description
discovery:
  noindex: false                     # opt back in, overriding the thin-tag cascade
  sitemap: true
---

Intro paragraph(s), rendered above the list of tagged posts.

The page’s own discovery overrides the kind: term cascade from content/tags/_index.md, so this one term goes index, follow and returns to the sitemap; the body renders as an intro above the posts.

Author profile (authorProfile) #

On an “About me” page, authorProfile: true emits ProfilePage and Person JSON-LD (with sameAs links from params.author.links) - see the About me page.

params:
  authorProfile: true

Category icon (categoryIcon) #

In a category’s _index.md (content/categories/<name>/), categoryIcon sets the Tabler icon shown on the category card (default tag):

# content/categories/features/_index.md
params:
  categoryIcon: rocket

Hugo’s own keys #

Hugo reads these itself, not the theme:

• title, date, lastmod, draft - title and dates. lastmod is shown as the “Updated” date (when showDateUpdated is on).
• description, summary - meta description and lede/teaser.
• categories, tags, series - the theme’s three taxonomies.
• translationKey - links the language variants of a post.
• slug, url - URL control. outputs - output formats (e.g. HTML only).
• aliases - client-side redirect stubs (automatically noindex), handy for old or short URLs:

aliases:
  - /old-url/
  - /l/shortlink

The full list of these keys lives in the Hugo front matter documentation.