Summary and Setup

In this lesson, you will be lead through the creation of your own website, hosted on GitHub Pages and built with Hugo. You can see an example of the author’s site linked below.

• Repo: https://github.com/sgibson91/sgibson91.github.io
• Webpage: https://sgibson91.github.io

Prerequisites

This lesson does require some technical skill and familiarity with a few intermediate concepts. Users are expected to be:

• Comfortable with the command line (try the UNIX Shell Software Carpentry lesson)
• Familiar with some basic git workflow commands (try the Git Novice Software Carpentry lesson)
• Familiar with testing and continuous integration concepts (try this testing and continuous integration Software Carpentry lesson)

See the Discussion section to understand why this lesson will use the terminal and Hugo, compared to GitHub Pages’ built-in Jekyll templates.

You can also follow along with the YouTube video below. It’s quite fast so feel free to pause and rewind as much as you need!

To prepare for this lesson you will need the following tools installed:

• A GitHub Account
  • You can sign up for free
• A terminal
  • Linux
  • Mac
  • Windows: Linux Bash (preferred), Command Prompt
    • If using the command prompt, some of the commands I use below will be different and you may wish to consult this cheatsheet
• git version control
  • Installation guide for all three Operating Systems
  • Follow this guide for one-time git setup the first time you use it
• hugo
  • Installation guide for all three Operating Systems
  • If you are installing on Linux, see the below section on installing the most recent version.
• A text editor of your choice! Examples:
  • VSCode
  • nano
  • gedit
  • Notepad++
  • emacs
  • vim

Installing the most recent version of Hugo on Linux

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When running sudo apt-get install hugo this does not always install the most recent version of hugo. If you find this is the case, you can try the following steps.

1. Go to https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases and find the latest release

2. Download the .deb file for Linux according to your architecture. This is most likely the file that ends _Linux-64bit.deb.

3. Once downloaded, run the following commands to install this version.

BASH

sudo dpkg -i {{ path to .deb file }}

4. Check the version has installed

BASH

hugo version

5. Clean up the .deb file

BASH

rm {{ path to .deb file }}