<p>For over two years, I avoided the work of setting up, and maintaining a technical blog outside of public publishing platforms like Medium, Hashnode and co.
So, when I decided that I was ready to do the work, I did a little bit of research to see the easiest way for me to setup a blog.</p>
<p>The things I considered were access, maintainability, setup, easy customization, and ownership. It's safe to say that Hugo meets all of my demands hugely. Hugo enables me to have access to my work through the use of terminal commands and markdowns. It works via a command-line interface only, which means that it has no graphical interface for users to interact with using a mouse.
Maintainability is easy for me because all my posts are written in markdown and I can update them whenever I want. When it comes to setup, using Hugo can be a bit tricky if you are not used to working with markdowns, but luckily, Hugo provides directions on how to get started via its documentation <a href="https://gohugo.io/documentation/">here</a>. Also, Hugo has options for you to deploy your site, using selected platforms like Azure, Netlify, AWS Amplify, GitHub..etc. You can find the overview of the deployment/hosting options Hugo integrates with <a href="https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Let's get started on setting up Hugo</p>
<p>First, we want to do a global install. I use a macOS, so the command line I ran is <code>brew install hugo</code>. If you use a different OS or are looking for an alternative install, you can find instructions <a href="https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing/">here</a>. After installation, double-check that Hugo is installed globally on your system by running the command <code>hugo version</code> to see the version installed on your system. To create a new Hugo project, <code>cd</code> into a new directory, and run the command <code>hugo new site &#x3C;site-name-here></code> in that directory. This generates a new Hugo site for you in your selected directory.</p>
<h4>Selecting a theme</h4>
<p>While themes are not mandatory when using Hugo, they help beautify your site. You can choose to build your theme or pick one from the list of already built themes out there. There are over a hundred Hugo themes that offer different layouts from websites to blogs. You can go through them on <a href="https://themes.gohugo.io/themes">this site</a>.</p>
<p>I chose a theme called <strong>Terminal</strong> because I found the layout uncommon. The original background for the theme was dark but I was able to customize it [with a separate custom CSS file] to a light theme for readability. To get a custom theme, select a theme on the site by clicking on the theme. Each theme comes with instructions on how to setup but a common way to set it up is to do a <code>git init</code> in your project's directory and then, install the theme as a git submodule.</p>
<p>Once the theme has been installed and previewed, you can then create a new Hugo markdown file by running the command <code>hugo new posts/&#x3C;new-file-name>.md</code>. The <code>new</code> keyword is self-descriptive and indicates that a new markdown file (.md) should be created. The <strong>posts</strong> path tells Hugo that this new file should be stored in the posts directory.</p>
<h4>Drafts</h4>
<p>When a new markdown content file is created, it has a draft flag which is automatically set to <strong>true</strong> until a user is ready to publish the file as a post. The flag tells Hugo that the file is in draft mode, and so, is not ready to be published yet. Once we are ready to publish, we set the draft flag to false and run the <code>hugo -D</code> command to build. The output of the build will be stored in a new <code>./public/</code> directory</p>
<h4>Hosting &#x26; Storage</h4>
<p>I think it's great to mention that with Hugo, there isn't any need for a database, in the traditional sense. Content is stored and served in static files.
For hosting, as I mentioned earlier, Hugo integrates with several hosting providers. You can go through the list <a href="https://themes.gohugo.io/themes">here</a> and make a choice. I initially deployed my site with <a href="https://netlify.com/">Netlify</a> - before moving it to my domain site - because it offers easy deployment with the click of a button. (I sound like I am in a commercial. Lol, I know).</p>
<p>That's it! Also, I plan on using Hugo to manage my blog until I come across a better alternative that meets my blog needs.</p>


Setting Up Hugo for My Blog