Organizing Content#

Learn how to effectively organize your blog content.

Directory Structure#

hugo-book theme uses a hierarchical directory structure:

content.en/
├── docs/
│   ├── _index.md          # Section main page
│   ├── getting-started.md
│   ├── tutorials/          # Sub-section
│   │   ├── _index.md
│   │   ├── tutorial-1.md
│   │   └── tutorial-2.md
│   └── guides/
│       ├── _index.md
│       └── guide-1.md
└── posts/                  # Blog posts
    ├── _index.md
    └── 2025-01-01-my-post.md

Categories and Tags#

Hugo supports categories and tags through the Taxonomy system.

Adding to Front Matter#

---
title: "Post Title"
categories: ["Tutorial", "Development"]
tags: ["hugo", "go", "web-development"]
---

hugo.toml Configuration#

To enable categories and tags:

# hugo.toml
[taxonomies]
  category = 'categories'
  tag = 'tags'

Note: hugo-book theme disables taxonomies by default, so you need to enable them in configuration.

Taxonomy Pages#

Hugo automatically generates these pages:

• /categories/ - List of all categories
• /categories/tutorial/ - Posts in “Tutorial” category
• /tags/ - List of all tags
• /tags/hugo/ - Posts with “hugo” tag

Menu Configuration#

Auto Menu (File Tree)#

hugo-book automatically generates sidebar menu from content.en/docs/ directory structure.

Adjust menu order with weight:

---
title: "First Document"
weight: 1  # Lower value appears higher
---

Section Configuration#

Control section behavior in _index.md:

---
title: "Tutorials"
weight: 10
bookFlatSection: false      # Display sub-items flat
bookCollapseSection: true   # Collapsed by default
---

Custom Menu#

Define menu manually in hugo.toml:

[[menu.before]]
  name = "Home"
  url = "/"
  weight = 1

[[menu.after]]
  name = "GitHub"
  url = "https://github.com/yourusername"
  weight = 10

Hiding Pages#

Hide specific pages from menu:

---
title: "Hidden Page"
bookHidden: true
---

Exclude from Search#

Exclude pages from search results:

---
title: "Search Excluded Page"
bookSearchExclude: true
---

Multi-language Content Organization#

Separation by Directory (Current Setup)#

content.ko/      # Korean content
  docs/
    getting-started.md

content.en/      # English content
  docs/
    getting-started.md

Separation by Filename (Alternative)#

content/
  docs/
    getting-started.ko.md
    getting-started.en.md

Translation Linking#

To link multi-language versions of the same content, maintain identical file structure:

content.ko/docs/tutorial.md
content.en/docs/tutorial.md

Hugo automatically generates language switcher links.

Static Files Organization#

Images#

static/
  images/
    2025/
      01/
        photo.jpg

Usage:

![Description](/images/2025/01/photo.jpg)

Download Files#

static/
  downloads/
    document.pdf

Link:

[Download PDF](/downloads/document.pdf)

Language-specific Static Files#

static/
  ko/
    images/
      banner.jpg
  en/
    images/
      banner.jpg

Archive Organization#

By Date#

content.en/
  posts/
    2025/
      01/
        post-1.md
        post-2.md

By Topic#

content.en/
  docs/
    backend/
      _index.md
      django.md
      fastapi.md
    frontend/
      _index.md
      react.md
      vue.md

Front Matter Templates#

Use archetypes for consistent metadata:

archetypes/docs.md#

---
title: "{{ replace .Name "-" " " | title }}"
date: {{ .Date }}
weight: 10
bookToc: true
categories: []
tags: []
---

Create new post:

hugo new --kind docs content.en/docs/my-post.md

Organization Tips#

1. Maintain Consistent Structure: Use identical directory structure across all languages
2. Weight System: Use increments like 10, 20, 30… for easy insertion later
3. Naming Convention: Use lowercase and hyphens for filenames (e.g., my-post.md)
4. Use Sections: Group related documents into sections
5. Optimize for Search: Include important keywords in titles and descriptions
6. Use ToC: Enable bookToc: true for long documents to improve readability