How I add notes to this site

A quick reference (mostly to my future self) for adding a new note here, and how the Notes section indexes them automatically.

How notes are indexed

The Notes menu points at /posts/. I never edit a list of links by hand — Hugo builds the index for me:

• The list page comes from content/posts/_index.md.
• Every folder under content/posts/ with an index.md becomes one note.
• Notes are sorted by the front-matter date, newest first.
• tags and categories generate their own index pages (/tags/…, /categories/…).
• Push to main → GitHub Actions rebuilds and deploys.

Steps to add a new note

1. Create a page bundle — a folder named after the URL slug, with an index.md inside:

   hugo new posts/tracking-research-trends/index.md

   This creates content/posts/tracking-research-trends/index.md, which will be served at /posts/tracking-research-trends/.

2. Fill in the front matter at the top of the file:

   ---
   title: "Tracking trends in scientific research"
   date: 2026-06-11
   draft: false
   author: "Xiaopeng Xu"
   description: "One-line summary shown in search and previews."
   tags: ["research-trends", "reading"]
   categories: ["Research"]
   toc:
     enable: true
   ---

3. Write the body in markdown below the front matter.

4. Add a summary cut where the preview card should stop:

   A short hook that shows on the Notes list and homepage.
   
   <!--more-->
   
   The full note continues here…

5. Co-locate images in the same folder and reference them with a relative path (use a quoted title for a caption):

   ![Trend overview](trend-overview.png "Publications per year in my field.")

6. Preview locally, then publish by pushing to main:

   hugo server -D          # -D also shows drafts
   git add content/posts/tracking-research-trends
   git commit -m "post: tracking trends in scientific research"
   git push origin main

Front-matter cheatsheet

Pre-publish checklist

• Folder is content/posts/<slug>/index.md
• draft: false and a correct date
• description set (for search and previews)
• tags / categories chosen
• Images co-located and rendering
• Previewed locally, then pushed to main

That’s the whole workflow — next up, notes like tracking trends in scientific research are just a new folder away.