Build a Hugo blog from scratch

This article is a record for the process of building Hugo blog.

Use Github Pages to build Hugo

The download of Hugo

• At first, we should download Hugo form Github (I advise you to download hugo_extended which supports more function). And then, unzip it to D:\Hblog\bin\ path. (Actually, you can choose the path by yourself)
• Configure the path of system:
  • Open the start menu and search Advanced System Settings
  • Open the Advanced System Settings , click Environment Variables, find Path in the System variables which is in the lower part of new window, double-click Path and click New in the newly opened window.
  • Enter the path D:\Hblog\bin into the box, then click OK. (you maybe need to restart your computer.)
• Open Command Prompt and check the version of Hugo by the below code to determine whether the above steps succeed.

  1	hugo version

The usage of Hugo

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# Create a new site under `D:\Hblog` path in powershell.
hugo new site site_name

# Download a theme that you like. (Here, I take LoveIt as an example)
## If you want to use vercel to build Hugo，you shouldn't use `git`, and you should download the original code and put it in `your_site/themes`, which will be displayed in the second part of this article.
cd site_name
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/dillonzq/LoveIt.git themes/LoveIt

# Update the LoveIt theme if you want.
cd themes/LoveIt
git pull

# Come back to `D:\Hblog\site_name`, and configurate the conf.toml file of theme.
cd ..
cd ..
echo theme = "LoveIt" >> config.toml

• After you download the theme, there is a config.toml file in the exampleSite folder of LoveIt theme (Or, you can see here). According to the config.toml, you can modify it and paste it into the your_site/config.toml file. I will give the content modified to you:

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  baseURL = "https://your-domain.org" # theme theme = "LoveIt" # website title title = "Stilig" defaultContentLanguage = "zh-cn" # determines default content language ["en", "zh-cn", "fr", "pl", ...] languageCode = "en" # language code ["en", "zh-CN", "fr", "pl", ...] languageCode = "en" # whether to include Chinese/Japanese/Korean hasCJKLanguage = true # default amount of posts in each pages paginate = 12 # google analytics code [UA-XXXXXXXX-X] googleAnalytics = "" # copyright description used only for seo schema copyright = "" # whether to use robots.txt enableRobotsTXT = true # whether to use git commit log #enableGitInfo = true # whether to use emoji code enableEmoji = true # ignore some build errors ignoreErrors = ["error-remote-getjson", "error-missing-instagram-accesstoken"] # Author config [author] name = "Stilig" email = "your_email" # Menu config [menu] [[menu.main]] weight = 1 identifier = "posts" # you can add extra information before the name (HTML format is supported), such as icons pre = "" # you can add extra information after the name (HTML format is supported), such as icons post = "" name = "Posts" url = "/posts/" # title will be shown when you hover on this menu link title = "" [[menu.main]] weight = 2 identifier = "tags" pre = "" post = "" name = "Tags" url = "/tags/" title = "" [[menu.main]] weight = 3 identifier = "categories" pre = "" post = "" name = "Categories" url = "/categories/" title = "" # Markup related configuration in Hugo [markup] # Syntax Highlighting (https://gohugo.io/content-management/syntax-highlighting) [markup.highlight] codeFences = true guessSyntax = true lineNos = true lineNumbersInTable = true # false is a necessary configuration (https://github.com/dillonzq/LoveIt/issues/158) noClasses = false # Goldmark is from Hugo 0.60 the default library used for Markdown [markup.goldmark] [markup.goldmark.extensions] definitionList = true footnote = true linkify = true strikethrough = true table = true taskList = true typographer = true [markup.goldmark.renderer] # whether to use HTML tags directly in the document unsafe = true # Table Of Contents settings [markup.tableOfContents] startLevel = 2 endLevel = 6 [params] # site default theme ["auto", "light", "dark"] defaultTheme = "light" # public git repo url only then enableGitInfo is true #gitRepo = "" # which hash function used for SRI, when empty, no SRI is used # ["sha256", "sha384", "sha512", "md5"] fingerprint = "sha256" # date format dateFormat = "2006-01-02" # website title for Open Graph and Twitter Cards title = "your_site_name" # website description for RSS, SEO, Open Graph and Twitter Cards description = "your_site_name" # website images for Open Graph and Twitter Cards images = ["you_avatar"] # Header config [params.header] # desktop header mode ["fixed", "normal", "auto"] desktopMode = "normal" # mobile header mode ["fixed", "normal", "auto"] mobileMode = "normal" # Header title config [params.header.title] # URL of the LOGO logo = "" # title name name = "Stilig" # you can add extra information before the name (HTML format is supported), such as icons pre = "" # you can add extra information after the name (HTML format is supported), such as icons post = "" # whether to use typeit animation for title name typeit = false # Footer config [params.footer] enable = true # Custom content (HTML format is supported) custom = '' # whether to show Hugo and theme info hugo = false # whether to show copyright info copyright = true # whether to show the author author = true # site creation time since = 2023 # ICP info only in China (HTML format is supported) icp = '' # license info (HTML format is supported) license = '<a rel="license external nofollow noopener noreffer" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-NC 4.0</a>' # Section (all posts) page config [params.section] # special amount of posts in each section page paginate = 20 # date format (month and day) dateFormat = "01-02" # amount of RSS pages rss = 10 # List (category or tag) page config [params.list] # special amount of posts in each list page paginate = 20 # date format (month and day) dateFormat = "01-02" # amount of RSS pages rss = 10 # App icon config [params.app] # optional site title override for the app when added to an iOS home screen or Android launcher title = "" # whether to omit favicon resource links noFavicon = false # modern SVG favicon to use in place of older style .png and .ico files svgFavicon = "" # Android browser theme color themeColor = "#ffffff" # Safari mask icon color iconColor = "#5bbad5" # Windows v8-11 tile color tileColor = "#da532c" # Search config [params.search] enable = true # type of search engine ["lunr", "algolia"] type = "algolia" # max index length of the chunked content contentLength = 4000 # placeholder of the search bar placeholder = "" # max number of results length maxResultLength = 10 # snippet length of the result snippetLength = 50 # HTML tag name of the highlight part in results highlightTag = "em" # whether to use the absolute URL based on the baseURL in search index absoluteURL = false ## Register to use, go to:https://www.algolia.com/ [params.search.algolia] index = "" appID = "" searchKey = "" # Home page config [params.home] # amount of RSS pages rss = 10 # Home page profile [params.home.profile] enable = true # Gravatar Email for preferred avatar in home page gravatarEmail = "" # URL of avatar shown in home page avatarURL = "" # title shown in home page (HTML format is supported) title = "" # subtitle shown in home page (HTML format is supported) subtitle = "Welcome to my blog" # whether to use typeit animation for subtitle typeit = true # whether to show social links social = true # disclaimer (HTML format is supported) disclaimer = "" # Home page posts [params.home.posts] enable = true # special amount of posts in each home posts page paginate = 6 # Social config in home page [params.social] GitHub = "" Linkedin = "" Twitter = "" Instagram = "" Facebook = "" Telegram = "" Medium = "" Gitlab = "" Youtubelegacy = "" Youtubecustom = "" Youtubechannel = "" Tumblr = "" Quora = "" Keybase = "" Pinterest = "" Reddit = "" Codepen = "" FreeCodeCamp = "" Bitbucket = "" Stackoverflow = "" Weibo = "" Odnoklassniki = "" VK = "" Flickr = "" Xing = "" Snapchat = "" Soundcloud = "" Spotify = "" Bandcamp = "" Paypal = "" Fivehundredpx = "" Mix = "" Goodreads = "" Lastfm = "" Foursquare = "" Hackernews = "" Kickstarter = "" Patreon = "" Steam = "" Twitch = "" Strava = "" Skype = "" Whatsapp = "" Zhihu = "" Douban = "" Angellist = "" Slidershare = "" Jsfiddle = "" Deviantart = "" Behance = "" Dribbble = "" Wordpress = "" Vine = "" Googlescholar = "" Researchgate = "" Mastodon = "" Thingiverse = "" Devto = "" Gitea = "" XMPP = "" Matrix = "" Bilibili = "" Discord = "" DiscordInvite = "" Lichess = "" ORCID = "" Pleroma = "" Kaggle = "" MediaWiki= "" Plume = "" HackTheBox = "" RootMe= "" Phone = "" Email = "" RSS = true # LoveIt 新增 | 0.2.0 # Page global config [params.page] # whether to hide a page from home page hiddenFromHomePage = false # whether to hide a page from search results hiddenFromSearch = false # whether to enable twemoji twemoji = false # whether to enable lightgallery lightgallery = true # whether to enable the ruby extended syntax ruby = true # whether to enable the fraction extended syntax fraction = true # whether to enable the fontawesome extended syntax fontawesome = true # whether to show link to Raw Markdown content of the content linkToMarkdown = false # whether to show the full text content in RSS rssFullText = false # Table of the contents config [params.page.toc] # whether to enable the table of the contents enable = true # whether to keep the static table of the contents in front of the post keepStatic = false # whether to make the table of the contents in the sidebar automatically collapsed auto = true # Code config [params.page.code] # whether to show the copy button of the code block copy = true # the maximum number of lines of displayed code by default maxShownLines = 50 # KaTeX mathematical formulas config (KaTeX https://katex.org/) [params.page.math] enable = false # default inline delimiter is $ ... $ and \( ... \) inlineLeftDelimiter = "" inlineRightDelimiter = "" # default block delimiter is $$ ... $$, \[ ... \], \begin{equation} ... \end{equation} and some other functions blockLeftDelimiter = "" blockRightDelimiter = "" # KaTeX extension copy_tex copyTex = true # KaTeX extension mhchem mhchem = true # Mapbox GL JS config (Mapbox GL JS https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js) [params.page.mapbox] # access token of Mapbox GL JS accessToken = "pk.eyJ1IjoiZGlsbG9uenEiLCJhIjoiY2s2czd2M2x3MDA0NjNmcGxmcjVrZmc2cyJ9.aSjv2BNuZUfARvxRYjSVZQ" # style for the light theme lightStyle = "mapbox://styles/mapbox/light-v10?optimize=true" # style for the dark theme darkStyle = "mapbox://styles/mapbox/dark-v10?optimize=true" # whether to add NavigationControl (https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#navigationcontrol) navigation = true # whether to add GeolocateControl (https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#geolocatecontrol) geolocate = true # whether to add ScaleControl (https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#scalecontrol) scale = true # whether to add FullscreenControl (https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#fullscreencontrol) fullscreen = true # Social share links in post page [params.page.share] enable = true Twitter = true Facebook = true Linkedin = false Whatsapp = false Pinterest = false Tumblr = false HackerNews = true Reddit = false VK = false Buffer = false Xing = false Line = true Instapaper = false Pocket = false Flipboard = false Weibo = true Blogger = false Baidu = false Odnoklassniki = false Evernote = false Skype = false Trello = false Mix = false # Comment config [params.page.comment] enable = false # Disqus comment config (https://disqus.com/) [params.page.comment.disqus] enable = false # Disqus shortname to use Disqus in posts shortname = "" # Gitalk comment config (https://github.com/gitalk/gitalk) [params.page.comment.gitalk] enable = false owner = "" repo = "" clientId = "" clientSecret = "" # Valine comment config (https://github.com/xCss/Valine) [params.page.comment.valine] enable = false appId = "" appKey = "" placeholder = "" avatar = "" meta= "" pageSize = 10 # automatically adapt the current theme i18n configuration when empty lang = "" visitor = true recordIP = true highlight = true enableQQ = false serverURLs = "" # emoji data file name, default is "google.yml" # ["apple.yml", "google.yml", "facebook.yml", "twitter.yml"] # located in "themes/LoveIt/assets/lib/valine/emoji/" directory # you can store your own data files in the same path under your project: # "assets/lib/valine/emoji/" emoji = "" # Facebook comment config (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments) [params.page.comment.facebook] enable = false width = "100%" numPosts = 10 appId = "" # automatically adapt the current theme i18n configuration when empty languageCode = "" # Telegram comments config (https://comments.app/) [params.page.comment.telegram] enable = false siteID = "" limit = 5 height = "" color = "" colorful = true dislikes = false outlined = false # Commento comment config (https://commento.io/) [params.page.comment.commento] enable = false # utterances comment config (https://utteranc.es/) [params.page.comment.utterances] enable = false # owner/repo repo = "" issueTerm = "pathname" label = "" lightTheme = "github-light" darkTheme = "github-dark" # giscus comment config (https://giscus.app/) [params.page.comment.giscus] # You can refer to the official documentation of giscus to use the following configuration. enable = false repo = "" repoId = "" category = "Announcements" categoryId = "" # automatically adapt the current theme i18n configuration when empty lang = "" mapping = "pathname" reactionsEnabled = "1" emitMetadata = "0" inputPosition = "bottom" lazyLoading = false lightTheme = "light" darkTheme = "dark" # Third-party library config [params.page.library] [params.page.library.css] # someCSS = "some.css" # located in # Or # someCSS = "https://cdn.example.com/some.css" [params.page.library.js] # someJavascript = "some.js" # located in "assets/" # Or # someJavascript = "https://cdn.example.com/some.js" # Page SEO config [params.page.seo] # image URL images = [] # Publisher info [params.page.seo.publisher] name = "xxxx" logoUrl = "" # TypeIt config [params.typeit] # typing speed between each step (measured in milliseconds) speed = 100 # blinking speed of the cursor (measured in milliseconds) cursorSpeed = 1000 # character used for the cursor (HTML format is supported) cursorChar = "|" # cursor duration after typing finishing (measured in milliseconds, "-1" means unlimited) duration = -1 # Site verification code for Google/Bing/Yandex/Pinterest/Baidu [params.verification] google = "" bing = "" yandex = "" pinterest = "" baidu = "" # Site SEO config [params.seo] # image URL image = "" # thumbnail URL thumbnailUrl = "" # Analytics config [params.analytics] enable = false # Google Analytics [params.analytics.google] id = "" # whether to anonymize IP anonymizeIP = true # Fathom Analytics [params.analytics.fathom] id = "" # server url for your tracker if you're self hosting server = "" # Plausible Analytics [params.analytics.plausible] dataDomain = "" # Yandex Metrica [params.analytics.yandexMetrica] id = "" # Cookie consent config [params.cookieconsent] enable = false # text strings used for Cookie consent banner [params.cookieconsent.content] message = "" dismiss = "" link = "" # CDN config for third-party library files [params.cdn] # CDN data file name, disabled by default # ["jsdelivr.yml"] # located in "themes/LoveIt/assets/data/cdn/" directory # you can store your own data files in the same path under your project: # "assets/data/cdn/" data = "" # Compatibility config [params.compatibility] # whether to use Polyfill.io to be compatible with older browsers polyfill = false # whether to use object-fit-images to be compatible with older browsers objectFit = false # Sitemap config [sitemap] changefreq = "weekly" filename = "sitemap.xml" priority = 0.5 # Permalinks config (https://gohugo.io/content-management/urls/#permalinks) [Permalinks] # posts = ":year/:month/:filename" posts = ":filename" # Privacy config (https://gohugo.io/about/hugo-and-gdpr/) [privacy] # privacy of the Google Analytics (replaced by params.analytics.google) [privacy.googleAnalytics] # ... [privacy.twitter] enableDNT = true [privacy.youtube] privacyEnhanced = true # Options to make output .md files [mediaTypes] [mediaTypes."text/plain"] suffixes = ["md"] # Options to make output .md files [outputFormats.MarkDown] mediaType = "text/plain" isPlainText = true isHTML = false # Options to make hugo output files [outputs] home = ["HTML", "RSS", "JSON"] page = ["HTML", "MarkDown"] section = ["HTML", "RSS"] taxonomy = ["HTML", "RSS"] taxonomyTerm = ["HTML"]

• Then, modify the template of D:\Hblog\site_name\archetypes\default.md file.

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  --- title: "{{ replace .TranslationBaseName "-" " " | title }}" subtitle: "" date: {{ .Date }} lastmod: {{ .Date }} draft: true author: "" authorLink: "" license: "" tags: [""] categories: [""] featuredImage: "" featuredImagePreview: "" summary: "" hiddenFromHomePage: false hiddenFromSearch: false toc: enable: true auto: true mapbox: share: enable: true comment: enable: true ---

• And then, create a blog under D:\Hblog\site_name\ path.

  1	hugo new content_type/content_name.md

  then, the D:\Hblog\site_name\content\content_type\content_name.md file will be created, and we can edit conten_name.md.
• Run Hugo to check whether the steps are correct.

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  hugo server # Note: If the parameter `draft` of content_name.md is `ture`, the webpage will not display this article after you execute the above command, so you should change `true` to `false` # If you want the draft which is `true` display, you should execute the below command. hugo server -D

  Then the powershell will display the URL http://localhost:1313/, as shown in the following picture. Opening it in browser, we can preview our blog.

  

The usage of Github Page

Push source files to remote repository

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# Go to `D:\Hblog\site_name` path in the powershell to initiate git.
git init

# Check the changes.
git status

# Submit it to staging area.
git add .

# Submit it to the version repository.
git commit -m "First"

# Create a branch
git branch -M main

# Ensure which remote repository that you want to push to.
git remote add origin https://github.com/<user_name>/<repo_name>.git
    
# Push it to remote repository.
git push -u origin main

If you want to synchronize it after later modifications, you can use below code under corresponding path:

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git status 
git add .
git commit -m "new"
git push

Add gh-pages.yml file

Create a new folder named .github under D:\Hblog\site_name path, and then create a new folder named workflows under the .github folder. Finally, create a file named gh-pages.yml and enter the below content into this file.

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name: github pages

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main  # Set a branch to deploy
  pull_request:
    
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          submodules: true  # Fetch Hugo themes (true OR recursive)
              fetch-depth: 0    # Fetch all history for .GitInfo and .Lastmod
    
      - name: Setup Hugo
        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
        with:
          hugo-version: 'latest'
          # extended: true
    
      - name: Build
        run: hugo --minify
    
      - name: Deploy
        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          publish_dir: ./public

Then we should synchronize this file modified to Github by the below code:

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git status 
git add .
git commit -m "new"
git push

Setting of Github Pages

After we achieve the above steps, we can find the Github repository that we operated just now and click Actions, and then we will see our webpages are built successfully.

Then under settiong->Pages of corresponding repository, you should modify branch to gh-pages and click sourse to choose gh-pages and then the Github will give you a domain name that is the domain name of your bolg.

Build Hugo by vercel

Preparation work

This step is like the steps of the first part that are ‘The download of Hugo’ and ‘The usage of Hugo’, but we shouldn’t download the theme by git clone, and if the theme you used is LoveIt, you can click here, then click Code, download the ZIP and unzip the theme file to D:\Hblog\site_name\themes.

Deployment work

• Register and log in vercel by Github account.
• Push the source file D:\Hblog\site_name to Github. But you should note that don’t push the public folder to Github, otherwise an error will reported during vercel execution. So we often add public to .gitignore and then push it to Github, as shown in the following operation:

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#进入 D:\Hblog\site_name 目录，再执行下面命令
echo 'public'>>.gitignore
git add .
git commit -m "gitignore"
git push

• Import project in vercel

  • After importing, we well see what the following picture shows, and we should open the switch of Build Command and Output Directory under Build and Output Settings. And then, we should enter hugo in the box Build Command and enter public in the box Output Directory
  • Enter HUGO_VERSION in the box NAME and enter 0.111.3 in the box VALUE. (About getting hugo version, I have written it at first.)

  

  • Then click deploy.

Bind your own domain name and enable forced https

After deploying, vercel will give us a domain name automatically, but if you don’t like the domain name given, you can also bind your own domain name.

• Open webpage of project, find Settings->Domains, add a domain name. And then it will display a CNAME address, we should resolve our own domain name here.
• About forcing https, if you use Cloudfare as the domain name resolution provider, you need simply change the SSL/TLS encryption mode to full at SSL/TLS.