GitHub wiki where I’ve published first blog post isn’t the most convenience platform to run a blog. I already have a VPS
and HTTP domain (stepniewski.tech) so I decided to find some simply solution to host blog myself.
I’m not interested in WordPress I’m looking for something lighter. Key expectation are: easy to start, easy to configuration,
easy to maintenance, good-looking themes, light (no redundant software required). I found hugo framework,
static website engine written in Go (Golang).
How it works?
- Choose and download theme,
- Configure it,
- Generate static files with Hugo,
- Serve static files with HTTP Server.
1. Installation
First you need to install Hugo, it is available in most popular package managers. I am using Fedora with dnf package manager.
$ sudo dnf install hugo
2. Create new site
Go to your workdir and start new Hugo site.
$ hugo new site blog
It will create Hugo directories structure. It is your workspace. Init git repository and download chosen theme (check themes) as git submodule. I will use erblog theme:
$ cd blog
$ git init
$ git submodule add https://github.com/ertuil/erblog themes/erblog
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
3. Add configuration
Prepare config file according to theme documentation.
$ nano config.toml
baseURL = "https://stepniewski.tech"
languageCode = "en-gb"
title = "stepniewski.tech"
theme = "erblog"
[Params]
author = "Paweł Stępniewski"
description = "Java & Scala Developer"
bio = "I believe to create reliable systems, you should be familiar with low-level issues. That's why I will public posts not only about programming topics but also about infrastructure, devops and system management. In spare time I like dancing Cuban salsa so maybe even post about dancing will be published some day."
badge = "orange"
quote = "red"
Check your theme documentation for other configurations options. For example, I added favicon.ico file to content directory.
4. Add first post
Create your first post:
$ hugo new post/0-hello-world.md
$PROJECT_DIR/blog/content/post/0-hello-world.md created
Pay attention that to add post in erblog theme you use command hugo new **post**/0-hello-world.md, meanwhile in the Hugo
quick-start tutorial you can find command hugo new **posts**/0-hello-world.md.
Modify new post file: $ nano content/post/0-hello-world.md
---
title: "Hello World..."
date: 2021-06-19T11:11:15+02:00
draft: false
tags: [hello]
---
<Put your blog content here>
Remember to set draft: false when it will be ready, otherwise it won’t be added to static files.
5. Check result
Hugo provides custom server for development purposes (it shouldn’t be used on production).
$ hugo -D server
Start building sites …
| EN
-------------------+------
Pages | 16
Paginator pages | 0
Non-page files | 1
Static files | 118
Processed images | 0
Aliases | 5
Sitemaps | 1
Cleaned | 0
Built in 15 ms
Watching for changes in $PROJECT_DIR/blog/{archetypes,content,data,layouts,static,themes}
Watching for config changes in $PROJECT_DIR/blog/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
-D options causes that draft posts will be visible. Now you can open your browser and go to http://localhost:1313
to check how your page looks like.
6. Production deploy
If you are ready to production deploy, call:
hugo
It will generate static files in public subdirectory. And it’s all! Now you can serve generated page using some HTTP server
like nginx