# Is it possible to create posts just by dropping markdown files to posts folder?
**URL:** https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650
**Category:** support
**Created:** [November 19, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650 "2021-11-19T12:04:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BlueSoul](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/BlueSoul)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650/1 "2021-11-19T12:04:22Z")
Hello, newbie question here. I have set up my Hugo locally to build my website. I do seem to be able to do what I want so far, but I was under the impression, that once do the initial set up, I can just write a markdown file and drop it to posts folder, rebuild the website and be done. But if I don’t first set up a new page using command “hugo new post/newpost.md”, Hugo disregards files in posts folder.
I want to host the website on GitLab Pages, so the more important question is, once I have the website in repo, can I keep dropping markdown files to the posts folder without going through the process of creating each new post with a command?
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### Author:  [@frjo](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/frjo)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650/2 "2021-11-19T15:19:55Z")
The `hugo new` command is just a convenience. What it mainly does is add frontmatter according to what you have set up in the archetypes.
You are free to create the needed frontmatter manually in your text editor. I do this often myself.
Adding “plain” markdown files without front matter will not work. Hugo needs the frontmatter to make sense of the content.
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### Author:  [@BlueSoul](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/BlueSoul)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2021, 4:27pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650/3 "2021-11-19T16:27:45Z")
Your kind reply gave me courage to investigate my problem some more and I figured it works well, if I don’t specify exact time of the post. I created a new post by modifying a copy of an existing post and when I deleted the time when it was created, so it only said day, like this: “date: 2021-11-19”, it worked like a charm. Thank you for the reply.
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### Author:  [@chrillek](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/chrillek)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2021, 10:47am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650/4 "2021-11-20T10:47:54Z")
Why would your post not display if the date contains a time? Maybe it’s worth getting to the root of this.
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### Author:  [@dnorman](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/dnorman)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2021, 6:42pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/is-it-possible-to-create-posts-just-by-dropping-markdown-files-to-posts-folder/35650/5 "2021-11-20T18:42:45Z")
Yup. They’re just text files, and you can create them in any editor without using the Hugo new command. I have an iOS shortcut that creates markdown files (with frontmatter) to post photos from my phone. Doesn’t touch Hugo until I want to build the site to publish.