1---
2title: Configure Markup
3description: How to handle Markdown and other markup related configuration.
4date: 2019-11-15
5categories: [getting started,fundamentals]
6keywords: [configuration,highlighting]
7weight: 65
8sections_weight: 65
9slug: configuration-markup
10toc: true
11---
12
13## Configure Markup
14
15{{< new-in "0.60.0" >}}
16
17See [Goldmark](#goldmark) for settings related to the default Markdown handler in Hugo.
18
19Below are all markup related configuration in Hugo with their default settings:
20
21{{< code-toggle config="markup" />}}
22
23**See each section below for details.**
24
25### Goldmark
26
27[Goldmark](https://github.com/yuin/goldmark/) is from Hugo 0.60 the default library used for Markdown. It's fast, it's [CommonMark](https://spec.commonmark.org/0.29/) compliant and it's very flexible. Note that the feature set of Goldmark vs Blackfriday isn't the same; you gain a lot but also lose some, but we will work to bridge any gap in the upcoming Hugo versions.
28
29This is the default configuration:
30
31{{< code-toggle config="markup.goldmark" />}}
32
33For details on the extensions, refer to [this section](https://github.com/yuin/goldmark/#built-in-extensions) of the Goldmark documentation
34
35Some settings explained:
36
37unsafe
38: By default, Goldmark does not render raw HTMLs and potentially dangerous links. If you have lots of inline HTML and/or JavaScript, you may need to turn this on.
39
40typographer
41: This extension substitutes punctuations with typographic entities like [smartypants](https://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/).
42
43attribute
44: Enable custom attribute support for titles and blocks by adding attribute lists inside single curly brackets (`{.myclass class="class1 class2" }`) and placing it _after the Markdown element it decorates_, on the same line for titles and on a new line directly below for blocks.
45
46{{< new-in "0.81.0" >}} In Hugo 0.81.0 we added support for adding attributes (e.g. CSS classes) to Markdown blocks, e.g. tables, lists, paragraphs etc.
47
48A blockquote with a CSS class:
49
50```md
51> foo
52> bar
53{.myclass}
54```
55
56There are some current limitations: For tables you can currently only apply it to the full table, and for lists the `ul`/`ol`-nodes only, e.g.:
57
58```md
59* Fruit
60  * Apple
61  * Orange
62  * Banana
63  {.fruits}
64* Dairy
65  * Milk
66  * Cheese
67  {.dairies}
68{.list}
69```
70
71Note that attributes in [code fences](/content-management/syntax-highlighting/#highlighting-in-code-fences) must come after the opening tag, with any other highlighting processing instruction, e.g.:
72
73````
74```go {.myclass linenos=table,hl_lines=[8,"15-17"],linenostart=199}
75// ... code
76```
77````
78
79autoHeadingIDType ("github") {{< new-in "0.62.2" >}}
80: The strategy used for creating auto IDs (anchor names). Available types are `github`, `github-ascii` and `blackfriday`. `github` produces GitHub-compatible IDs, `github-ascii` will drop any non-Ascii characters after accent normalization, and `blackfriday` will make the IDs work as with [Blackfriday](#blackfriday), the default Markdown engine before Hugo 0.60. Note that if Goldmark is your default Markdown engine, this is also the strategy used in the [anchorize](/functions/anchorize/) template func.
81
82### Blackfriday
83
84
85[Blackfriday](https://github.com/russross/blackfriday) was Hugo's default Markdown rendering engine, now replaced with Goldmark. But you can still use it: Just set `defaultMarkdownHandler` to `blackfriday` in your top level `markup` config.
86
87This is the default config:
88
89{{< code-toggle config="markup.blackFriday" />}}
90
91### Highlight
92
93This is the default `highlight` configuration. Note that some of these settings can be set per code block, see [Syntax Highlighting](/content-management/syntax-highlighting/).
94
95{{< code-toggle config="markup.highlight" />}}
96
97For `style`, see these galleries:
98
99* [Short snippets](https://xyproto.github.io/splash/docs/all.html)
100* [Long snippets](https://xyproto.github.io/splash/docs/longer/all.html)
101
102For CSS, see [Generate Syntax Highlighter CSS](/content-management/syntax-highlighting/#generate-syntax-highlighter-css).
103
104### Table Of Contents
105
106{{< code-toggle config="markup.tableOfContents" />}}
107
108These settings only works for the Goldmark renderer:
109
110startLevel
111: The heading level, values starting at 1 (`h1`), to start render the table of contents.
112
113endLevel
114: The heading level, inclusive, to stop render the table of contents.
115
116ordered
117: Whether or not to generate an ordered list instead of an unordered list.
118
119
120## Markdown Render Hooks
121
122{{< new-in "0.62.0" >}}
123
124Note that this is only supported with the [Goldmark](#goldmark) renderer.
125
126Render Hooks allow custom templates to override markdown rendering functionality. You can do this by creating templates with base names `render-{feature}` in `layouts/_default/_markup`.
127
128You can also create type/section specific hooks in `layouts/[type/section]/_markup`, e.g.: `layouts/blog/_markup`.{{< new-in "0.71.0" >}}
129
130The features currently supported are:
131
132* `image`
133* `link`
134* `heading` {{< new-in "0.71.0" >}}
135
136You can define [Output-Format-](/templates/output-formats) and [language-](/content-management/multilingual/)specific templates if needed. Your `layouts` folder may look like this:
137
138```bash
139layouts
140└── _default
141    └── _markup
142        ├── render-image.html
143        ├── render-image.rss.xml
144        └── render-link.html
145```
146
147Some use cases for the above:
148
149* Resolve link references using `.GetPage`. This would make links portable as you could translate `./my-post.md` (and similar constructs that would work on GitHub) into `/blog/2019/01/01/my-post/` etc.
150* Add `target=_blank` to external links.
151* Resolve and [process](/content-management/image-processing/) images.
152* Add [header links](https://remysharp.com/2014/08/08/automatic-permalinks-for-blog-posts).
153
154### Render Hook Templates
155
156The `render-link` and `render-image` templates will receive this context:
157
158Page
159: The [Page](/variables/page/) being rendered.
160
161Destination
162: The URL.
163
164Title
165: The title attribute.
166
167Text
168: The rendered (HTML) link text.
169
170PlainText
171: The plain variant of the above.
172
173The `render-heading` template will receive this context:
174
175Page
176: The [Page](/variables/page/) being rendered.
177
178Level
179: The header level (1--6)
180
181Anchor
182: An auto-generated html id unique to the header within the page
183
184Text
185: The rendered (HTML) text.
186
187PlainText
188: The plain variant of the above.
189
190Attributes (map) {{< new-in "0.82.0" >}}
191: A map of attributes (e.g. `id`, `class`)
192
193#### Link with title Markdown example:
194
195```md
196[Text](https://www.gohugo.io "Title")
197```
198
199Here is a code example for how the render-link.html template could look:
200
201{{< code file="layouts/_default/_markup/render-link.html" >}}
202<a href="{{ .Destination | safeURL }}"{{ with .Title}} title="{{ . }}"{{ end }}{{ if strings.HasPrefix .Destination "http" }} target="_blank" rel="noopener"{{ end }}>{{ .Text | safeHTML }}</a>
203{{< /code >}}
204
205#### Image Markdown example:
206
207```md
208![Text](https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/c38c7334cc3f23585738e40334284fddcaf03d5e/2e17c/images/hugo-logo-wide.svg "Title")
209```
210
211Here is a code example for how the render-image.html template could look:
212
213{{< code file="layouts/_default/_markup/render-image.html" >}}
214<p class="md__image">
215  <img src="{{ .Destination | safeURL }}" alt="{{ .Text }}" {{ with .Title}} title="{{ . }}"{{ end }} />
216</p>
217{{< /code >}}
218
219#### Heading link example
220
221Given this template file
222
223{{< code file="layouts/_default/_markup/render-heading.html" >}}
224<h{{ .Level }} id="{{ .Anchor | safeURL }}">{{ .Text | safeHTML }} <a href="#{{ .Anchor | safeURL }}">¶</a></h{{ .Level }}>
225{{< /code >}}
226
227And this markdown
228
229```md
230### Section A
231```
232
233The rendered html will be
234
235```html
236<h3 id="section-a">Section A <a href="#section-a">¶</a></h3>
237```
238