Getting Started with Hugo

Hugo is a fast and modern static site generator written in Go, and designed to make website creation fun again. In this post, I’ll share my experience setting up my personal website using Hugo and the PaperMod theme.

Why Hugo?

Hugo offers several advantages for building personal websites:

  1. Speed: Hugo is incredibly fast at building sites
  2. Simplicity: Easy to learn and use
  3. Flexibility: Great for blogs, documentation, and personal websites
  4. Active Community: Many themes and plugins available

Setting Up Your First Hugo Site

1. Installation

# Install Hugo
brew install hugo  # For macOS
# or
apt-get install hugo  # For Ubuntu

2. Create a New Site

hugo new site mywebsite
cd mywebsite

3. Add a Theme

I chose PaperMod for its clean design and excellent features:

git submodule add https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod.git themes/PaperMod

4. Configuration

The config.yaml file is where you define your site’s settings. Here’s a basic example:

baseURL: 'https://your-domain.com'
languageCode: 'en-us'
title: 'Your Site Title'
theme: 'PaperMod'

Creating Content

Creating new content in Hugo is straightforward:

hugo new posts/my-first-post.md

Conclusion

Hugo is an excellent choice for building personal websites. Its speed, simplicity, and flexibility make it a great tool for developers and non-developers alike.

Stay tuned for more posts about customizing your Hugo site and adding advanced features!

Resources