Adding Author tag to RSS Feed using Hugo static site generator

This post details how to include the author tag in the generated RSS feed for a Hugo-generated site.

Default RSS Template

Hugo comes equipped with a template by default. In fact you might be pleasantly surprised to discover your site has an RSS feed already. You can try it out by visiting your site and adding /index.xml on the end of either of your home page, or your section containing your blog posts. e.g.,

• https://craigrussell.io/index.xml
• https://craigrussell.io/posts/index.xml

Customising The Template

While the default template might be enough for some, others are going to want to customise it. For me, I found that I wanted to include an <author> tag in my posts.

You can either grab the default template and add the <author> tag into it (recommended approach) or just skip ahead and grab my one from the gist below. I would recommend using the default one as it may contain newer changes from Hugo that my gist won’t have over time.

To do this, we must start by grabbing a copy of the embedded RSS template. We’ll drop that into your project and customise it to include the author tag.

1. Get the default Hugo RSS template

2. Save the template into your Hugo directory as layouts/_default/rss.xml

3. Add the <author> tag in. You’ll probably want to add it under the <item> tag, and you may additionally want to add it at the top level.

When you’re done, it should look like this 👇

1. Ensure you have your name detailed in the site config (i.e., config.yaml, config.toml or config.json file)

// config.yaml

author: 
  name: Craig Russell

Final RSS

Now when you publish the site and access the RSS XML, you’ll see the <author> is now included.