Writing

Pages and articles

Every page is a Markdown file in content/. Its place decides its address, and a few lines at the top decide its title, date and summary.

A page is a file

Every page of your site is one file in content/, ending in .md. Here's the template's About page, content/about.md:

The file content/about.md: front matter with title and summary between two lines of three dashes, then the page in Markdown

It has two parts:

  1. Front matter, between the two --- lines at the top: settings for the page, written in YAML. title is the page's name; summary is the one line search results and link previews show.
  2. The body, after the second ---: the page itself, written in Markdown.

Where it goes decides its address

File Address on your site
content/about.md /about/
content/opening-hours.md /opening-hours/
content/services/catering.md /services/catering/
content/index.md / (the home page)

Use lowercase letters, numbers and dashes in file names, no spaces: opening-hours.md, not Opening Hours.md.

Add a page

  1. Make a new file in content/, for example content/opening-hours.md.

  2. Give it front matter and a body:

    ---
title: Opening hours
summary: When we're open, including holidays.
---

We're open every day except Sunday.

  3. Save. With hotdog-cms serve running, open http://127.0.0.1:8140/opening-hours/ to see it.

  4. Add it to the menu if people should find it from every page: see Menus and links.

Articles: pages with dates

A folder in content/ is a collection. The template has one, content/articles/, for news and blog posts. A page in a collection gets more than a plain page:

  • a date, shown on the page and used to sort the list, newest first;
  • a place on the collection's list page (/articles/) and the home page's latest articles;
  • a place in the collection's news feed, which feed readers follow;
  • tags, each with its own page (see Tags);
  • a reading time, and links to the previous and next article.

The articles page: a card for each article with its title, date and summary, newest first

An article's front matter adds a date, and usually tags and a picture for link previews:

The file content/articles/a-new-oven.md: title, date, summary, tags, image and image_alt in the front matter, then the article

And here it is on the site:

The article on the site: its title, date and reading time, two tags, and the text with its picture

Want another collection, like news/ or recipes/? Make the folder in content/ and put pages in it. To give it a feed or change how it's sorted, add it under collections: in site.yaml; see the site.yaml reference.

The front matter you'll use most

Key What it does
title The page's name, at the top of the page and in browser tabs. Required.
summary One sentence for search results, lists and link previews. Keep it under about 160 characters.
date When it was written, as 2026-10-08. Articles need one.
updated When it last changed meaningfully, shown alongside the date.
tags Subjects, as a list: tags: [News, Opening hours].
image, image_alt The picture link previews show, and a description of it for people who can't see it.
draft draft: true keeps the page off the published site.

Every key is in the front matter reference.

Hide a page while you work on it

Add draft: true to its front matter. hotdog-cms serve still shows it, so you can look at it, but hotdog-cms build, check and publish leave it out. Take the line away, or set it to false, when it's ready. To publish it at a set time instead, see Scheduling.

Remove a page

Delete its file. If other pages link to it, the checks tell you which ones, so you can fix them before you publish. If people might have saved its address, add a redirect to where it went.