# Adding parameters to config.toml

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/adding-parameters-to-config-toml/266>\
**Category:** feature\
**Created:** [October 28, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/adding-parameters-to-config-toml/266 "2014-10-28T06:23:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michael\_henderson](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/michael_henderson/32/10490_2.png) [@michael\_henderson](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/michael_henderson)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/adding-parameters-to-config-toml/266/1 "2014-10-28T06:23:16Z")

</div>

It would be helpful if the “–verbose” flag caused Hugo to say something like, “Hey, I’m going to ignore this section in your configuration file. It’s valid TOML but you need to add it to a [Params] section if you want to use it.”

I ran across this tonight. I wanted to add a flag to control some text in my footer. It took me a while to puzzle out why it wasn’t working.

If I want to add information on the author, I add this to the `config.toml` file.

```auto
[author]
    name = "michael d henderson"

```

If I want to add a parameter “skin” that tracks a value, the following won’t work:

```auto
[skin]
	show_generated_by = true

```

Instead, I have to add

```auto
[Params.skin]
	show_generated_by = true

```

It’s late and it took me a few times through the documentation to figure out that .Site.Author is special, so Hugo will accept `[author]` and do nice things with it. Having gone through this once, I probably won’t make the same mistake many more times. But, having gone through it, it’s frustrating to track down.

The other option would be to automatically add the sections to .Params, but that could be even more confusing (see my earlier post about .Site.Params.Author vs .Site.Author).

> [@SOLVED: How to access a .Site parameter variable directly](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/solved-how-to-access-a-site-parameter-variable-directly/264/2):
>
> No “.Params” in the variable name.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 11:56am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/adding-parameters-to-config-toml/266/2 "2014-10-28T11:56:00Z")

</div>

I’ve been there myself.

Could you create an issue on GitHub about printin some warnings?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michael\_henderson](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/michael_henderson/32/10490_2.png) [@michael\_henderson](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/michael_henderson)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/adding-parameters-to-config-toml/266/3 "2014-10-28T14:25:44Z")

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Done.

> <https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/589>
>
> It would be helpful if the "--verbose" flag caused Hugo to provide a warning that custom data needs to be a...