Hugo is a fast, open-source static site generator that simplifies creating websites.
brew install hugo
Creating a new hugo site
hugo new site <my-site-name>- replace <my-site-name> with my desired project name: sarah-hugo
Installing a Theme for my hugo site
- Hugo doesn’t come with a built-in default theme
- choose a theme from hugo themes that suits my project (popular: Ananke theme (for beginners))
+ Initializing a Git Repository (in <my-site-name> folder)
cd sarah-hugo
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git themes/anankeConfigure Hugo to use the theme by editing the hugo.toml configuration file
# vi sarah-hugo/hugo.toml
baseURL = 'https://example.org/'
languageCode = 'en-us'
title = 'My New Hugo Site'
theme = "ananke"Creating a Simple Content File
hugo new posts/my-first-post.md- generates a new Markdown file located in the content/posts directory
open the newly created file in my preferred text editor:
nano content/posts/my-first-post.md+++
date = '2025-11-05T17:45:09+09:00'
draft = true
title = 'My First Post'
+++
add some content below the front matter
# Welcome to My First Post!
This is my very first post using Hugo and Git. Exciting times ahead!- in nano, CTR + 0, then Enter, and then CTRL + X to exit
Staging my changes
stage all changes in my project directory by running:
git add .Making my first commit
git config --global user.email "my@gmail.com"
git config --global user.name "my name"
git commit -m "Add first post: My First Post"Viewing my changes with Hugo
start the Hugo server to view the changes locally
hugo server -D- -D flag stands for Draft
open my web browser and go to ‘http://localhost:1313’
Viewing my commit history
git logcommit axxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx0 (HEAD → main)
Author: my name <my@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Nov 5 18:17:59 2025 +0900
Add first post: My First Post
Ignoring unnecessary files with .gitignore
it’s important to recognize that not all files need to be tracked by Git
- such as logs, build artifacts, and environment configurations
inside the root of your project directory, create a file named .gitignore:
touch .gitignoreIn this file, you can specify file patterns that Git should ignore. For example:
# Ignore log files
*.log
# Ignore Hugo build directory
public/
# Ignore temporary editor files
*.swpReferences:
From Theory to Practice: A Git Workshop for Beginners - https://hjortberg.substack.com/p/from-theory-to-practice-a-git-workshop