Relationship between dot, Site and Page Context

There are scope and context concepts in the Go template language. This post explains why we have to use . to access site variables and page variables.

Version

Hugo 0.92

Layout

context001

My Blog is a site variable
My Home is a page variable

layouts/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <script src="alpine.js" defer></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="output.css" />
    <title>{{ .Site.Title }}</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>{{ .Title }}</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Line 8

<title>{{ .Site.Title }}</title>

.Site.Title : title is a site variable defined in config.json

Line 11

<h1>{{ .Title }}</h1>

.Title : title is a page variable defined in Markdown

Context

context000

The current context in a template is represented by the .
In a Hugo layout, the context is set to the Page context. That’s why we can access title page variable by .Title
Hugo makes all the site variables in the Page context under the Site key. That’s why we can access title site variable by .Site.Title

Conclusion

Hugo sets the Page context to the current context. So we have to use . to access page variables
Hugo set all site variables under the Site key of the Page context. So we have to use .Site to access site variables