Git Workshop - hugo

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/ananke

Configure 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 log

commit 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 .gitignore

In 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
*.swp

References: 

From Theory to Practice: A Git Workshop for Beginners - https://hjortberg.substack.com/p/from-theory-to-practice-a-git-workshop