..

TIL: Using Obsidian for my Blog

I wanted a simple way to write blog posts without opening VS Code. Obsidian turned out to be perfect for this.

Setup

  1. Open your Hugo repo as an Obsidian vault - the whole repo, not just content/. This lets you work with images in static/ too.

  2. Add .obsidian/ to your .gitignore - Obsidian creates a config folder in your vault. Ignore it so it doesn’t clutter your repo.

  3. Install the Templater plugin - This lets you create templates with dynamic content like auto-filled dates and titles.

  4. Configure file locations - Settings → Files & Links:

    • Set “Default location for new notes” to content/posts
    • Set “Default location for new attachments” to static/images

Obsidian Files and Links settings

Now new posts go directly to the right folder, and screenshots paste where Hugo expects them.

  1. Tell Hugo to ignore your templates - Add this to your hugo.toml:
ignoreFiles = ['_templates/']

Otherwise Hugo tries to parse your Templater templates as content and fails on the dynamic date syntax.

Workflow

When I want to write a new post, I open the command palette and select “Templater: Create new note from template”:

Selecting Templater from the Obsidian command palette

That’s it - the template pre-fills the Hugo front matter, and I start writing. No terminal commands, no context switching.

Images

One quirk: Hugo serves static/ at the root, so image paths in your posts should be /images/filename.png (not static/images/...). Obsidian won’t preview these correctly, but Hugo renders them fine. Minor annoyance, but livable.

Why This Works

Hugo posts are just markdown files with YAML front matter. Obsidian is a markdown editor. They’re already compatible - no conversion scripts or sync tools needed.

The template handles the tedious part (front matter), and everything else is just writing.