Configuration

You can modify site settings in _config.yml or in an alternate config file.

Site

Setting Description
title The title of your website
subtitle The subtitle of your website
description The description of your website
author Your name
language The language of your website. Use a 2-lettter ISO-639-1 code. Default is en.
timezone The timezone of your website. Hexo uses the setting on your computer by default. You can find the list of available timezones here. Some examples are America/New_York, Japan, and UTC.

URL

Setting Description Default
url The URL of your website
root The root directory of your website
permalink The permalink format of articles :year/:month/:day/:title/
permalink_defaults Default values of each segment in permalink
Website in subdirectory

If your website is in a subdirectory (such as http://example.org/blog) set url to http://example.org/blog and set root to /blog/.

Directory

Setting Description Default
source_dir Source folder. Where your content is stored source
public_dir Public folder. Where the static site will be generated public
tag_dir Tag directory tags
archive_dir Archive directory archives
category_dir Category directory categories
code_dir Include code directory (subdirectory of source_dir) downloads/code
i18n_dir i18n directory :lang
skip_render Paths not to be rendered. You can use glob expressions for path matching

Writing

Setting Description Default
new_post_name The filename format for new posts :title.md
default_layout Default layout post
titlecase Transform titles into title case? false
external_link Open external links in new tab? true
filename_case Transform filenames to 1 lower case; 2 upper case 0
render_drafts Display drafts? false
post_asset_folder Enable the Asset Folder? false
relative_link Make links relative to the root folder? false
future Display future posts? true
highlight Code block settings

Category & Tag

Setting Description Default
default_category Default category uncategorized
category_map Category slugs
tag_map Tag slugs

Date / Time format

Hexo uses Moment.js to process dates.

Setting Description Default
date_format Date format YYYY-MM-DD
time_format Time format HH:mm:ss

Pagination

Setting Description Default
per_page The amount of the posts displayed on a single page. 0 disables pagination 10
pagination_dir Pagination directory page

Extensions

Setting Description
theme Theme name. false disables theming
theme_config Theme configuration. Include any custom theme settings under this key to override theme defaults.
deploy Deployment setting

Include/Exclude Files or Folders

In the config file, set the include/exlude key to make hexo explicitly process or ignore certain files/folders.

Setting Description
include Hexo defaultly ignore hidden files and folders, but set this field will make Hexo process them
exclude Hexo process will ignore files list under this field

Sample:

# Include/Exclude Files/Folders
include:
- .nojekyll
exclude:
- .DS_Store

Using an Alternate Config

A custom config file path can be specified by adding the --config flag to your hexo commands with a path to an alternate YAML or JSON config file, or a comma-separated list (no spaces) of multiple YAML or JSON files.

# use 'custom.yml' in place of '_config.yml'
$ hexo server --config custom.yml

# use 'custom.yml' & 'custom2.json', prioritizing 'custom2.json'
$ hexo server --config custom.yml,custom2.json

Using multiple files combines all the config files and saves the merged settings to _multiconfig.yml. The later values take precedence. It works with any number of JSON and YAML files with arbitrarily deep objects. Note that no spaces are allowed in the list.

For instance, in the above example if foo: bar is in custom.yml, but "foo": "dinosaur" is in custom2.json, _multiconfig.yml will contain foo: dinosaur.

Overriding Theme Config

Hexo themes are independent projects, with separate _config.yml files.

Instead of forking a theme, and maintaining a custom branch with your settings, you can configure it from your site’s primary configuration file.

Example configuration:

# _config.yml
theme_config:
bio: "My awesome bio"
# themes/my-theme/_config.yml
bio: "Some generic bio"
logo: "a-cool-image.png"

Resulting theme configuration:

{
bio: "My awesome bio",
logo: "a-cool-image.png"
}