Set Up Hugo with Go

To build Hugo sites locally, install Homebrew and Hugo. You do not need to install Go to use Hugo as your static site generator. These instructions are for a Mac or Linux system, but you can also read the Windows installation instructions on the gohugo.io site.

Since Hugo is built on Go, you can use the binary for your operating system. No need to maintain a development environment. Upgrades are easy too, get a new binary and install it and you’re upgraded.

Prerequisites

Windows, MacOS, or a Linux-based environment.
On MacOS, you will install Homebrew.
On Windows, you must install Docker.
On Windows, you must install Git for Windows which includes Git Bash.

Set up Hugo on Windows with Git Bash and Docker

You can also set up Docker and then use this Docker image, and set up alias commands for hugo running in Docker, but using the same hugo commands in Git Bash on Windows.

Set up Hugo on MacOS

Install Homebrew. See the Homebrew site for instructions.
Use Homebrew to install Hugo.
```
$ brew install hugo
```

Verify the hugo installation by checking the version value.

$ hugo version
Hugo Static Site Generator v0.42.1 darwin/amd64

Starting a Hugo site

For a Hugo static site, you can choose your specific theme after you create the source files. The theme we’ll use in this tutorial is hugo-theme-learn. To start a new site in the current folder, run:

   $ hugo new site docs-as-code

Take a look at the files created in the directory with an ls command:

  $ ls -A
  archetypes	content		layouts		themes
  config.toml	data		static

Edit config.toml in any text editor you like to get started. Choose a title for your site and the theme, in our case, hugo-theme-learn. The theme name in your configuration file must match the name of the specific theme directory inside the /themes directory, so we will add those files in the next step.
```
  baseURL = "http://example.org/"
  languageCode = "en-us"
  title = "Learning Hugo Site"
  theme = "hugo-theme-learn"
```
To get the theme files in the /themes directory, change to the themes directory, and then use a git clone command to get the required theme files.
```
  $ cd themes
  $ git clone https://github.com/matcornic/hugo-theme-learn.git
```
For Hugo, the content folder contains the site source content. For your home page, make an _index.md document in the content folder and write it with Markdown content. Switch back up one level since you just cloned the theme files.
```
  $ cd ..
  $ hugo new _index.md
```

Next, add a new page using the hugo command, hugo new:

  $ hugo new prerequisites.md
  /Users/agentle/src/hugo-example/doc-machine/content/prerequisites.md created

You can keep adding files with the hugo new command so that the Markdown files are pre-populated with the front matter:
```
  ---
  title: "Prerequisites"
  date: 2018-06-16T10:38:19-05:00
  draft: true
  ---
```

Build a Hugo site locally

Once you’ve prepared your local system, you can build locally and review the site in your browser.

For Hugo, it’s important to know that draft pages are only served when using the -D parameter.

Run the hugo server command with the -D parameter.

$ hugo server -D

                      | EN
   +------------------+----+
     Pages            | 12
     Paginator pages  |  0
     Non-page files   |  0
     Static files     | 67
     Processed images |  0
     Aliases          |  0
     Sitemaps         |  1
     Cleaned          |  0

   Total in 48 ms
   Watching for changes in /Users/agentle/src/hugo-example/doc-machine/{content,data,layouts,static,themes}
   Watching for config changes in /Users/agentle/src/hugo-example/doc-machine/config.toml
   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

Open the Web Server URL, http://localhost:1313/ in your local browser to view the site.
Press Ctrl+C in the server terminal to stop the Hugo server.
You can add your files to a Git commit. Refer to Working with content in GitHub repositories for a documentation workflow with your Hugo site.

Modify the Hugo theme

By default, the Hugo Theme “Learn” has a purple sidebar. How about changing the color and logo displayed in the sidebar? Here’s how. While we’re at it, let’s make sure to configure the search tool that works best with this theme.

Edit the config.toml file and add these lines to the config.toml file. This example shows setting the themeVariant to green.
```
[params]
themeVariant = "green"
```
You can make sure that the theme works with the lunr.js JavaScript search engine by adding these lines to the config.toml file.
```
[outputs]
home = [ "HTML", "RSS", "JSON"]
```

What’s next

Evaluating options

Additional references

Enter your email for free lessons plus a review checklist in a neat PDF file.