Not every markdown file is ready for production. You can hide or exclude them.

---

Hide File

CAUTION

Drafts are always rendered. We simply hide them from the post list in production. ANYBODY can still access them via URL.

A file marked as draft means it will not be included in post-list in production.

You can set draft: true to mark this file is a draft at frontmatter.

---
title: Unpublished Draft
date: 2026-10-02
draft: true # <- Marked as Draft
---

Also, any file without a date will be treated as a draft.

---
title: A No-Date Post
---

If files are marked as draft, we will output:

[blog] not in the Blog: /posts/notes/a.md — draft: true
# or
[blog] not in the Blog: /posts/notes/b.md — no date

Exclude File

Sometimes a file should not be part of the site at all — no page, no URL.

Unlike draft, excluded files are NOT reachable at all in production.

In order to debug, it can still be accessed via URL in dev, but it not will be in post-list.

Marked as exclude (Recommended)

---
title: An Excluded File
date: 2026-10-02
exclude: true # <- Marked as exclude
---

ThemeConfig

It is for files that are not Posts — a README.md sitting in a content directory.

If the file is post, we recommend to mark as excluded at frontmatter.

.vitepress/config.ts

export default defineConfig<ThemeConfig>({
  extends: blogConfig(path.resolve(import.meta.dirname, '..')),
  srcExclude: ['docs/README.md']
})

---

If files are marked as excluded, we will output:

[blog] not in the Blog: /docs/demo/c.md — exclude: true