Versioning
Option The theme offers a way to version your site. This is useful if you want to keep older versions of your site available while also providing links to the current version. Each site version needs to be created separately and is functional independent of each other.
A version switcher will be displayed at the top of the sidebar if versioning is configured. If the user selects a different version, the theme will navigate to the actual page location but in the selected version. If this page does not exist in the selected version, the 404 page will be displayed.
If you want to have more control, where the version switcher is positioned or you want to configure a different icon, see the chapter on sidebar configuration.
Example: Versioning an Existing Site
Assume, you are writing a documentation for an app. At some point you are a releasing a new major version. This new version requires enhanced documentation while the older documentation must still be available for users of the older app version.
This is your intial hugo.toml
file:
baseURL = 'https://example.com/'
baseURL: https://example.com/
{
"baseURL": "https://example.com/"
}
To setup versioning, you have to do the following steps:
- Prepare your old site for versioning.
- add an array of all available
versions
to yourhugo.toml
- add information, which of these versions is the latest by setting the
isLatest
option on one item in theversions
array - add information, which of these versions your site actually is, by setting the
version
option - change your
baseURL
to the version specific URLhugo.baseURL = 'https://example.com/v1.0/' [params] version = 'v1.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/' identifier = 'v2.0' isLatest = true title = 'Latest' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v1.0/' identifier = 'v1.0' title = 'v1.0'
baseURL: https://example.com/v1.0/ params: version: v1.0 versions: - baseURL: https://example.com/ identifier: v2.0 isLatest: true title: Latest - baseURL: https://example.com/v1.0/ identifier: v1.0 title: v1.0
{ "baseURL": "https://example.com/v1.0/", "params": { "version": "v1.0", "versions": [ { "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "identifier": "v2.0", "isLatest": true, "title": "Latest" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v1.0/", "identifier": "v1.0", "title": "v1.0" } ] } }
- add an array of all available
- Generate your old site into the
baseURL
(in our casehttps://example.com/v1.0/
) - Copy you Hugo project into a new directory
- Make changes to the documentation for the new version
- Prepare your new site for release.
- leave the previously set array of available
versions
as is - change the information, which of the versions your site actually is, by setting the
version
option - change your
baseURL
back to the original URLhugo.baseURL = 'https://example.com/' [params] version = 'v2.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/' identifier = 'v2.0' isLatest = true title = 'Latest' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v1.0/' identifier = 'v1.0' title = 'v1.0'
baseURL: https://example.com/ params: version: v2.0 versions: - baseURL: https://example.com/ identifier: v2.0 isLatest: true title: Latest - baseURL: https://example.com/v1.0/ identifier: v1.0 title: v1.0
{ "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "params": { "version": "v2.0", "versions": [ { "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "identifier": "v2.0", "isLatest": true, "title": "Latest" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v1.0/", "identifier": "v1.0", "title": "v1.0" } ] } }
- leave the previously set array of available
- Generate your new site to the chosen location (in our case
https://example.com/
)
A few things to note here:
version
must be anidentifier
of one of the entries in theversions
array- you are not limited with the
baseURL
, these can be absolute or relative to your server root - you can generate your old versions into the directory of the new version
Example: Add New Versions to a Versioned Site
At some point, your version 2 of the app may be deprecated, too, as you’ve released a new version 3.
You only need to create two versions of your site, the former current one and the new current one.
- Prepare your old site.
- add the new version to the array of available
versions
in yourhugo.toml
- revise information, which of these versions is the latest by setting the
isLatest
option on one item in theversions
array - change your
baseURL
to the version specific URLhugo.baseURL = 'https://example.com/v2.0/' [params] version = 'v2.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/' identifier = 'v3.0' isLatest = true title = 'Latest' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v2.0/' identifier = 'v2.0' title = 'v2.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v1.0/' identifier = 'v1.0' title = 'v1.0'
baseURL: https://example.com/v2.0/ params: version: v2.0 versions: - baseURL: https://example.com/ identifier: v3.0 isLatest: true title: Latest - baseURL: https://example.com/v2.0/ identifier: v2.0 title: v2.0 - baseURL: https://example.com/v1.0/ identifier: v1.0 title: v1.0
{ "baseURL": "https://example.com/v2.0/", "params": { "version": "v2.0", "versions": [ { "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "identifier": "v3.0", "isLatest": true, "title": "Latest" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v2.0/", "identifier": "v2.0", "title": "v2.0" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v1.0/", "identifier": "v1.0", "title": "v1.0" } ] } }
- add the new version to the array of available
- Generate your old site into the
baseURL
(in our casehttps://example.com/v2.0/
) - Copy you Hugo project into a new directory
- Make changes to the documentation for the new version
- Prepare your new site for release.
- leave the previously set array of available
versions
as is - change the information, which of the versions your site actually is, by setting the
version
option - change your
baseURL
back to the original URLhugo.baseURL = 'https://example.com/' [params] version = 'v3.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/' identifier = 'v3.0' isLatest = true title = 'Latest' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v2.0/' identifier = 'v2.0' title = 'v2.0' [[params.versions]] baseURL = 'https://example.com/v1.0/' identifier = 'v1.0' title = 'v1.0'
baseURL: https://example.com/ params: version: v3.0 versions: - baseURL: https://example.com/ identifier: v3.0 isLatest: true title: Latest - baseURL: https://example.com/v2.0/ identifier: v2.0 title: v2.0 - baseURL: https://example.com/v1.0/ identifier: v1.0 title: v1.0
{ "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "params": { "version": "v3.0", "versions": [ { "baseURL": "https://example.com/", "identifier": "v3.0", "isLatest": true, "title": "Latest" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v2.0/", "identifier": "v2.0", "title": "v2.0" }, { "baseURL": "https://example.com/v1.0/", "identifier": "v1.0", "title": "v1.0" } ] } }
- leave the previously set array of available
- Generate your new site to the chosen location (in our case
https://example.com/
)
A few things to note here:
- you don’t need to recreate version 1 of your site as long as the
baseURL
for the entry marked withisLatest=true
hasn’t changed. The old versions will access the version index of the latest site to display all available versions in the version switcher
Hiding the Deprecation Warning
Option If visitors navigate to an old version of your site, they will see a deprecation warning at the top of each page.
You can disable it be setting the disableVersionWarning
option to true
in your hugo.toml
.
[params]
disableVersionWarning = true
params:
disableVersionWarning: true
{
"params": {
"disableVersionWarning": true
}
}
Change URL of the Version Index
Option The default URL for the version index can be changed with the versionIndexURL
parameter
[params]
versionIndexURL = 'myversionindex.js'
params:
versionIndexURL: myversionindex.js
{
"params": {
"versionIndexURL": "myversionindex.js"
}
}
Note
You only need to change these if you have other own content created for those URLs.
Check for duplicate URLs by running hugo --printPathWarnings
.