Update [2020-05-31 Sun 17:23]: I published a simpler workflow for this, using Hugo’s build options that I wasn’t aware of, because they are relatively new.

A few friends and I run a weekly writing club similar to this. Once we have our drafts ready, we usually share them for reviews, etc.

Previously, I used to use Nikola, and it’s default behaviour is what worked well for this workflow – share the posts URL with reviewers, but the post shouldn’t appear in the feed, post list, etc.

If you set the status metadata field of a post to draft, it will not be shown in indexes and feeds. It will be compiled, and if you deploy it it will be made available, so use with care. If you wish your drafts to be not available in your deployed site, you can set DEPLOY_DRAFTS = False in your configuration.

I moved to using Hugo a few years ago. By default, it doesn’t publish the draft posts, but you could ask it to do so using the --buildDrafts option. But, that doesn’t do what I want – draft posts are treated just like any other post, and they appear in the feeds, post list, etc.

Given how fast hugo builds are, though, it is pretty easy to hack-up the behaviour I want.

1. Run a build with drafts, say to dev directory.

   DEV_DIR="dev"
   # Build drafts to dev dir
   hugo --cleanDestinationDir -D -d "${DEV_DIR}" > /dev/null
   

2. Run a build without drafts, to public directory.

   PUBLIC_DIR="public"
   hugo --cleanDestinationDir -d "${PUBLIC_DIR}"
   

3. Copy the drafts from the dev build to the public build

   rsync -ri --ignore-existing "${DEV_DIR}"/ "${PUBLIC_DIR}"
   

4. Deploy the public build

The code above is here as a single script. Here is the full deployment script for my blog.