Configuration
Table of Contents
Congo is a highly customisable theme and uses some of the latest Hugo features to simplify how it is configured.
The theme ships with a default configuration that gets you up and running with a basic blog or static website.
Configuration files bundled with the theme are provided in TOML format as this is the default Hugo syntax. Feel free to convert your config to YAML or JSON if you wish.
The default theme configuration is documented in each file so you can freely adjust the settings to meet your needs.
config/_default/ folder of your Hugo project and delete the config.toml file in your project root.Site configuration #
Standard Hugo configuration variables are respected throughout the theme, however there are some specific things that should be configured for the best experience.
The site configuration is managed through the config/_default/config.toml file. The table below outlines all the settings that the Congo takes advantage of.
Note that the variable names provided in this table use dot notation to simplify the TOML data structure (ie. outputs.home refers to [outputs] home).
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
theme | "congo" | When using Hugo Modules this config value should be removed. For all other installation types, this must be set to congo for the theme to function. |
baseURL | Not set | The URL to the root of the website. |
defaultContentLanguage | "en" | This value determines the default language of theme components and content. Refer to the language and i18n section below for supported language codes. |
enableRobotsTXT | true | When enabled, a robots.txt file will be created in the site root that allows search engines to crawl the entire site. If you prefer to provide your own pre-made robots.txt, set to false and place your file in the static directory. For complete control, you may provide a custom layout to generate this file. |
paginate | 10 | The number of articles listed on each page of the article listing. |
summaryLength | 0 | The number of words that are used to generate the article summary when one is not provided in the front matter. A value of 0 will use the first sentence. This value has no effect when summaries are hidden. |
outputs.home | ["HTML", "RSS", "JSON"] | The output formats that are generated for the site. Congo requires HTML, RSS and JSON for all theme components to work correctly. |
permalinks | Not set | Refer to the Hugo docs for permalink configuration. |
taxonomies | Not set | Refer to the Organising content section for taxonomy configuration. |
Language and i18n #
Congo is optimised for full multilingual websites and theme assets are translated into several languages out of the box. The language configuration allows you to generate multiple versions of your content to provide a customised experience to your visitors in their native language.
The theme currently supports the following languages out of the box:
| Language | Code |
|---|---|
| 🇬🇧 English (default) | en |
| 🇪🇬 Arabic | ar |
| 🇧🇩 Bengali | bn |
| 🇧🇬 Bulgarian | bg |
| 🇨🇳 Chinese - Simplified (China) | zh-cn |
| 🇹🇼 Chinese - Traditional (Taiwan) | zh-tw |
| 🇨🇿 Czech | cs |
| 🇳🇱 Dutch | nl |
| 🇫🇮 Finnish | fi |
| 🇫🇷 French | fr |
| 🇩🇪 German | de |
| 🇮🇱 Hebrew | he |
| 🇭🇺 Hungarian | hu |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesian | id |
| 🇮🇹 Italian | it |
| 🇯🇵 Japanese | ja |
| 🇰🇷 Korean | ko |
| 🇵🇱 Polish | pl |
| 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-br |
| 🇵🇹 Portuguese (Portugal) | pt-pt |
| 🇷🇴 Romanian | ro |
| 🇷🇺 Russian | ru |
| 🇸🇰 Slovak | sk |
| 🇪🇸 Spanish (Spain) | es |
| 🇸🇪 Swedish | sv |
| 🇱🇰 Tamil | ta |
| 🇹🇷 Turkish | tr |
| 🇺🇦 Ukrainian | uk |
| 🇻🇳 Vietnamese | vi |
The default translations can be overridden by creating a custom file in i18n/[code].yaml that contains the translation strings. You can also use this method to add new languages. If you’d like to share a new translation with the community, please open a pull request.
Configuration #
In order to be as flexible as possible, a language configuration file needs to be created for each language on the website. By default Congo includes an English language configuration at config/_default/languages.en.toml.
The default file can be used as a template to create additional languages, or renamed if you wish to author your website in a language other than English. Simply name the file using the format languages.[language-code].toml.
defaultContentLanguage parameter in the site configuration matches the language code in your language config filename.| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
languageCode | "en" | The Hugo language code for this file. It can be a top-level language (ie. en) or a sub-variant (ie. en-AU) and should match the language code in the filename. |
languageName | "English" | The name of the language. |
languageDirection | "ltr" | Whether or not this is an RTL language. Set to "rtl" to reflow content from right-to-left. Congo fully supports using RTL and LTR languages at the same time and will dynamically adjust to both. |
weight | 1 | The weight determines the order of languages when building multilingual sites. |
title | "Congo" | The title of the website. This will be displayed in the site header and footer. |
copyright | Not set | A Markdown string containing the copyright message to be displayed in the site footer. If none is provided, Congo will automatically generate a copyright string using the site title. |
params.dateFormat | "2 January 2006" | How dates are formatted in this language. Refer to the Hugo docs for acceptable formats. |
params.mainSections | Not set | The sections that should be displayed in the recent articles list. If not provided the section with the greatest number of articles is used. |
params.description | Not set | The website description. This will be used in the site metadata. |
params.author.name | Not set | The author’s name. This will be displayed in article footers, and on the homepage when the profile layout is used. |
params.author.image | Not set | Path to the image file of the author. The image should be a 1:1 aspect ratio and placed in the site’s assets/ folder. |
params.author.headline | Not set | A Markdown string containing the author’s headline. It will be displayed on the profile homepage under the author’s name. |
params.author.bio | Not set | A Markdown string containing the author’s bio. It will be displayed in article footers. |
params.author.links | Not set | The links to display alongside the author’s details. The config file contains example links which can simply be uncommented to enable. The order that the links are displayed is determined by the order they appear in the array. Custom links can be added by providing corresponding SVG icon assets in assets/icons/. |
Menus #
Congo also supports language-specific menu configurations. Menu config files follow the same naming format as the languages file. Simply provide the language code in the file name to tell Hugo which language the file relates to.
Menu config files are named with the format menus.[language-code].toml. Always ensure that the language code used in the menus configuration matches the languages configuration.
The Getting Started section explains more about the structure of this file. You can also refer to the Hugo menu docs for more configuration examples.
Theme parameters #
Congo provides a large number of configuration parameters that control how the theme functions. The table below outlines every available parameter in the config/_default/params.toml file.
Many of the article defaults here can be overridden on a per article basis by specifying it in the front matter. Refer to the Front Matter section for further details.
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
colorScheme | "congo" | The theme colour scheme to use. Valid values are congo (default), avocado, cherry, fire, ocean, sapphire and slate. Refer to the Colour Schemes section for more details. |
defaultAppearance | "light" | The default theme appearance, either light or dark. |
autoSwitchAppearance | true | Whether the theme appearance automatically switches based upon the visitor’s operating system preference. Set to false to force the site to always use the defaultAppearance. |
enableSearch | false | Whether site search is enabled. Set to true to enable search functionality. Note that the search feature depends on the outputs.home setting in the site configuration being set correctly. |
enableCodeCopy | false | Whether copy-to-clipboard buttons are enabled for <code> blocks. The highlight.noClasses parameter must be set to false for code copy to function correctly. Read more about other configuration files below. |
enableImageLazyLoading | true | Whether images should be marked for lazy loading by the browser. |
enableImageWebp | true | Whether images should be output in the more performant WebP format. |
enableQuicklink | true | Whether the Quicklink library should be included in the site. Quicklink prefetches links based upon the user’s viewport and leads to faster page navigation. |
robots | Not set | String that indicates how robots should handle your site. If set, it will be output in the page head. Refer to Google’s docs for valid values. |
fingerprintAlgorithm | "sha256" | String that indicates which hashing algorithm is used when fingerprinting assets. Valid options include md5, sha256, sha384 and sha512. |
header.layout | "basic" | The layout of the page header and menu. Valid values are basic, hamburger, hybrid or custom. When set to custom, you must provide your own layout by creating a /layouts/partials/header/custom.html file. |
header.logo | Not set | The relative path to the site logo file within the assets/ folder. The logo file should be provided at 2x resolution and supports any image dimensions. |
header.logoDark | Not set | As per the header.logo parameter, however this image is used whenever dark mode is active. |
header.showTitle | true | Whether the site title is displayed in the header. |
footer.showCopyright | true | Whether or not to show the copyright string in the site footer. Note that the string itself can be customised using the copyright parameter in the languages configuration. |
footer.showThemeAttribution | true | Whether or not to show the “powered by” theme attribution in the site footer. If you choose to disable this message, please consider attributing the theme somewhere else on your site (for example, on your about page). |
footer.showAppearanceSwitcher | false | Whether or not to show the appearance switcher in the site footer. The browser’s local storage is used to persist the visitor’s preference. |
footer.showScrollToTop | true | When set to true the scroll to top arrow is displayed. |
homepage.layout | "page" | The layout of the homepage. Valid values are page, profile or custom. When set to custom, you must provide your own layout by creating a /layouts/partials/home/custom.html file. Refer to the Homepage Layout section for more details. |
homepage.showRecent | false | Whether or not to display the recent articles list on the homepage. |
homepage.recentLimit | 5 | The maximum number of recent articles to display when homepage.showRecent is true. |
article.showDate | true | Whether or not article dates are displayed. |
article.showDateUpdated | false | Whether or not the dates articles were updated are displayed. |
article.showAuthor | true | Whether or not the author box is displayed in the article footer. |
article.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the article header. |
article.showDraftLabel | true | Whether or not the draft indicator is shown next to articles when site is built with --buildDrafts. |
article.showEdit | false | Whether or not the link to edit the article content should be displayed. |
article.editURL | Not set | When article.showEdit is active, the URL for the edit link. |
article.editAppendPath | true | When article.showEdit is active, whether or not the path to the current article should be appended to the URL set at article.editURL. |
article.showHeadingAnchors | true | Whether or not heading anchor links are displayed alongside headings within articles. |
article.showPagination | true | Whether or not the next/previous article links are displayed in the article footer. |
article.invertPagination | false | Whether or not to flip the direction of the next/previous article links. |
article.showReadingTime | true | Whether or not article reading times are displayed. |
article.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on articles. |
article.showTaxonomies | false | Whether or not the taxonomies related to this article are displayed. |
article.showWordCount | false | Whether or not article word counts are displayed. |
article.showComments | false | Whether or not the comments partial is included after the article footer. |
article.sharingLinks | Not set | An array of sharing links to display at the end of each article. Valid options include facebook, x-twitter, mastodon, pinterest, reddit, linkedin, email, telegram and line. When not provided, or set to false, no links will be displayed. |
list.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the header on list pages. |
list.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on list pages. |
list.showTaxonomies | false | Whether or not the taxonomies related to this article are displayed on list pages. |
list.showSummary | false | Whether or not article summaries are displayed on list pages. If a summary is not provided in the front matter, one will be auto generated using the summaryLength parameter in the site configuration. |
list.groupByYear | true | Whether or not articles are grouped by year on list pages. |
list.paginationWidth | 1 | How many pagination links to output either side of the current page when the page list needs to be truncated. A width of 1 will output one link either side of the current page when the list needs to be truncated. Links to the current, first and last pages are always displayed and are in addition to this value. |
sitemap.excludedKinds | ["taxonomy", "term"] | Kinds of content that should be excluded from the generated /sitemap.xml file. Refer to the Hugo docs for acceptable values. |
taxonomy.showTermCount | true | Whether or not the number of articles within a taxonomy term is displayed on the taxonomy listing. |
fathomAnalytics.site | Not set | The site code generated by Fathom Analytics for the website. Refer to the Analytics docs for more details. |
plausibleAnalytics.domain | Not set | Enter the domain of the website you want to track. Refer to the Analytics docs for more details. |
plausibleAnalytics.event | Not set | Plausible api event proxied URL. Refer to the Analytics docs for more details. |
plausibleAnalytics.script | Not set | Plausible analysis script proxied URL. Refer to the Analytics docs for more details. |
verification.google | Not set | The site verification string provided by Google to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.bing | Not set | The site verification string provided by Bing to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.pinterest | Not set | The site verification string provided by Pinterest to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.yandex | Not set | The site verification string provided by Yandex to be included in the site metadata. |
Other configuration files #
The theme also includes a markup.toml configuration file. This file contains some important parameters that ensure that Hugo is correctly configured to generate sites built with Congo.
Always ensure this file is present in the config directory and that the required values are set. Failure to do so may cause certain features to function incorrectly and could result in unintended behaviour.