Writing workshop instructions with Hugo, with variables in your content

This is the second part of my series covering how to Write workshop instructions with Hugo. In the first part, we saw how to:

• bootstrap a website with Hugo
• add content, organized in chapters and sections
• customize the look and feel to be suitable for workshop instructions

For this second part, we will add variables to our content so that we can easily adjust the workshop instructions to different use cases.

One of the most common usage we have for variables is to deliver the same workshop on different environments. This means URLs, username and passwords change and we need to adjust our workshop instructions very quicky to match the new environment.

We will continue the example we started in part 1 of this serie: the Hugo mini-training. Lets pretend that we need to change very often the GIT URL we use in the section named “Git commit”!

First, edit your config.toml and add custom parameters that match your needs. In our example, we need a GitHub username and repository to change the GIT URL accordingly.

[params]
github_username = john
github_repository = hugo-custom-workshop

Change the content/packaging/git-commit.md to update the commit instructions:

git remote add origin git@github.com:{{< param github_username >}}/{{< param github_repository >}}.git
git push -u origin master

Test locally your changes new website by running:

hugo server -D

You can now open http://localhost:1313/packaging/git-commit/ and confirm that variables have been expanded:

git remote add origin git@github.com:john/hugo-custom-workshop.git
git push -u origin master

Congratulation, you can now change your github_username and github_repository variables at will and see your changes reflect in your pages!

Be sure to read part 3: Writing workshop instructions with Hugo and deploying in OpenShift to learn how to deploy Hugo websites in a container!