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What's on this Page

  • Step 1: Install Hugo
  • Step 2: Create a New Site
  • Step 3: Add a Theme
  • Step 4: Add Some Content
  • Step 5: Start the Hugo server
  • Step 6: Customize the Theme
GETTING STARTED

Quick Start

Create a Hugo site using the beautiful Ananke theme.

This quick start uses macOS in the examples. For instructions about how to install Hugo on other operating systems, see install.

It is recommended to have Git installed to run this tutorial.

For other approaches to learning Hugo (like books or video tutorials), refer to the external learning resources page.

Step 1: Install Hugo

Homebrew and MacPorts, package managers for macOS, can be installed from brew.sh or macports.org respectively. See install if you are running Windows etc.

brew install hugo
# or
port install hugo

To verify your new install:

hugo version

Step 2: Create a New Site

hugo new site quickstart

The above will create a new Hugo site in a folder named quickstart.

Step 3: Add a Theme

See themes.gohugo.io for a list of themes to consider. This quickstart uses the beautiful Ananke theme.

First, download the theme from GitHub and add it to your site’s themes directory:

cd quickstart
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git themes/ananke

Note for non-git users:

  • If you do not have git installed, you can download the archive of the latest version of this theme from: https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke/archive/master.zip
  • Extract that .zip file to get a “gohugo-theme-ananke-master” directory.
  • Rename that directory to “ananke”, and move it into the “themes/” directory.

Then, add the theme to the site configuration:

echo theme = \"ananke\" >> config.toml

Step 4: Add Some Content

You can manually create content files (for example as content/<CATEGORY>/<FILE>.<FORMAT>) and provide metadata in them, however you can use the new command to do a few things for you (like add title and date):

hugo new posts/my-first-post.md

Edit the newly created content file if you want, it will start with something like this:

---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2019-03-26T08:47:11+01:00
draft: true
---

Drafts do not get deployed; once you finish a post, update the header of the post to say draft: false. More info here.

Step 5: Start the Hugo server

Now, start the Hugo server with drafts enabled:

▶ hugo server -D

                   | EN
+------------------+----+
  Pages            | 10
  Paginator pages  |  0
  Non-page files   |  0
  Static files     |  3
  Processed images |  0
  Aliases          |  1
  Sitemaps         |  1
  Cleaned          |  0

Total in 11 ms
Watching for changes in /Users/bep/quickstart/{content,data,layouts,static,themes}
Watching for config changes in /Users/bep/quickstart/config.toml
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from memory
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop

Navigate to your new site at http://localhost:1313/.

Feel free to edit or add new content and simply refresh in browser to see changes quickly. (You might need to force refresh your web browser, something like Ctrl-R usually works.)

Step 6: Customize the Theme

Your new site already looks great, but you will want to tweak it a little before you release it to the public.

Site Configuration

Open up config.toml in a text editor:

baseURL = "https://example.org/"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "My New Hugo Site"
theme = "ananke"

Replace the title above with something more personal. Also, if you already have a domain ready, set the baseURL. Note that this value is not needed when running the local development server.

Tip: Make the changes to the site configuration or any other file in your site while the Hugo server is running, and you will see the changes in the browser right away, though you may need to clear your cache.

For theme specific configuration options, see the theme site.

For further theme customization, see Customize a Theme.

Step 7: Build static pages

It is simple. Just call:

hugo -D

Output will be in ./public/ directory by default (-d/--destination flag to change it, or set publishdir in the config file).

See Also

  • External Learning Resources
  • Use Hugo Modules
  • Basic Usage
  • About Hugo
    • Overview
    • Hugo's Security Model
    • Hugo and GDPR
    • What is Hugo
    • Hugo Features
    • The Benefits of Static
    • License
  • Getting Started
    • Get Started Overview
    • Quick Start
    • Install Hugo
    • Basic Usage
    • Directory Structure
    • Configuration
    • External Learning Resources
  • Hugo Modules
    • Hugo Modules Overview
    • Configure Modules
    • Use Hugo Modules
    • Theme Components
  • Content Management
    • Content Management Overview
    • Organization
    • Page Bundles
    • Content Formats
    • Front Matter
    • Build Options
    • Page Resources
    • Image Processing
    • Shortcodes
    • Related Content
    • Sections
    • Content Types
    • Archetypes
    • Taxonomies
    • Summaries
    • Links and Cross References
    • URL Management
    • Menus
    • Static Files
    • Table of Contents
    • Comments
    • Multilingual and i18n
    • Syntax Highlighting
  • Templates
    • Templates Overview
    • Introduction
    • Template Lookup Order
    • Custom Output Formats
    • Base Templates and Blocks
    • List Page Templates
    • Homepage Template
    • Section Templates
    • Taxonomy Templates
    • Single Page Templates
    • Content View Templates
    • Data Templates
    • Partial Templates
    • Shortcode Templates
    • Local File Templates
    • 404 Page
    • Menu Templates
    • Pagination
    • RSS Templates
    • Sitemap Template
    • Robots.txt
    • Internal Templates
    • Alternative Templating
    • Template Debugging
  • Functions
    • Functions Quick Reference
    • .AddDate
    • .Format
    • .Get
    • .GetPage
    • .HasMenuCurrent
    • .IsMenuCurrent
    • .Param
    • .Render
    • .RenderString
    • .Scratch
    • .Unix
    • absLangURL
    • absURL
    • after
    • anchorize
    • append
    • apply
    • base64
    • chomp
    • complement
    • cond
    • countrunes
    • countwords
    • default
    • delimit
    • dict
    • echoParam
    • emojify
    • eq
    • errorf and warnf
    • fileExists
    • findRE
    • first
    • float
    • ge
    • getenv
    • group
    • gt
    • hasPrefix
    • highlight
    • hmac
    • htmlEscape
    • htmlUnescape
    • hugo
    • humanize
    • i18n
    • Image Functions
    • in
    • index
    • int
    • intersect
    • isset
    • jsonify
    • lang
    • lang.Merge
    • last
    • le
    • len
    • lower
    • lt
    • markdownify
    • Math
    • md5
    • merge
    • ne
    • now
    • os.Stat
    • partialCached
    • path.Base
    • path.Dir
    • path.Ext
    • path.Join
    • path.Split
    • plainify
    • pluralize
    • print
    • printf
    • println
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    • readFile
    • ref
    • reflect.IsMap
    • reflect.IsSlice
    • relLangURL
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    • relURL
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    • replaceRE
    • safeCSS
    • safeHTML
    • safeHTMLAttr
    • safeJS
    • safeURL
    • seq
    • sha
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    • site
    • slice
    • slicestr
    • sort
    • split
    • string
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    • strings.HasSuffix
    • strings.Repeat
    • strings.RuneCount
    • strings.TrimLeft
    • strings.TrimPrefix
    • strings.TrimRight
    • strings.TrimSuffix
    • substr
    • symdiff
    • templates.Exists
    • time
    • time.Format
    • title
    • transform.Unmarshal
    • trim
    • truncate
    • union
    • uniq
    • upper
    • urlize
    • urls.Parse
    • where
    • with
  • Variables
    • Variables Overview
    • Site Variables
    • Page Variables
    • Shortcode Variables
    • Pages Methods
    • Taxonomy Variables
    • File Variables
    • Menu Entry Properties
    • Hugo Variables
    • Git Variables
    • Sitemap Variables
  • Hugo Pipes
    • Hugo Pipes Overview
    • Hugo Pipes Introduction
    • SASS / SCSS
    • PostProcess
    • PostCSS
    • JavaScript Building
    • Babel
    • Asset minification
    • Asset bundling
    • Fingerprinting and SRI
    • Resource from Template
    • Resource from String
  • CLI
  • Troubleshooting
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  • Contribute
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“Quick Start” was last updated: October 13, 2021: 211013更新 (39313e9)
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