Removing old posts after changing the export file name

[amca01]

I've been writing a few posts lately, and some posts have needed to be split into two, and hence the initial value of EXPORT_FILE_NAME has needed to be changed. So I might have, at the beginning of a post, something like:

:PROPERTIES:
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: an_initial_name
:EXPORT_DATE: 2023-07-07
:END: 

When I export all of the org file (which contains all of my posts) to Hugo, I'll have a post corresponding to that file name. But suppose later I change the export file name:

:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: a_new_and_better_name

Now, when I export to Hugo, I have two blog posts with the same title (which hasn't changed), each corresponding to one of the exported file names.

How do I either (a) prevent this from happening, or (b) remove the old post? It's not enough to remove it from the public directory, as there may still be a link to it in index.xml.

(This may be more of a Hugo question than an ox-hugo question. But since all my interaction with Hugo is through ox-hugo, I thought I should ask here first.) Many thanks!

[kaushalmodi]

How do I either (a) prevent this from happening

There's no way. If you are modifying the EXPORT_FILE_NAME, the exported Markdown file name will change.

, or (b) remove the old post?

Yes, each time you modify the EXPORT_FILE_NAME, also remember to delete the old Markdown file from the content/ directory.

It's not enough to remove it from the public directory, as there may still be a link to it in index.xml.

I don't understand this. When you delete the old Markdown file from content/, Hugo will regenerate the whole public/ directory. So there shouldn't be any references to the old deleted file in index.xml.

Don't manually tweak the files in public/ because that whole directory gets regenerated by Hugo.

---

If you are managing the ox-hugo exports using git

If you change the EXPORT_FILE_NAME, you will notice that there are now 2 Markdown files (old and new) when you do git status. You can review that and delete the old file before you rerun Hugo.

---

This issue is also a duplicate of #34. If you follow the thread, someone chose to just delete the entire content/ directory and report all the Org files using ox-hugo each time. I don't recommend that though if you are changing only one file name at a time. It's much easier to be aware of the change and manually delete the old file.

ox-hugo remains to be conservative in nature such that it won't auto-delete anything; it will only export and create new files or modify existing files in content/ based on the changes in the Org files.

[kaushalmodi]

This may be more of a Hugo question than an ox-hugo question

If deleting the old Markdown file from content/ solves the problem, then this is not a Hugo issue.

It would be a Hugo issue if the index.xml had references to the old file even after deleting it from the content/ directory. Again, don't modify the files inside public/!