QuickstartNOT

This website was built and is now updated with Hugo. The task was not easy, mostly due to errors in the Hugo quickstart tutorial. After installation, the tutorial advises to download a theme and go through a couple of steps that result in the theme being placed in the site’s themes folder with the specific name of the theme. Then that name is entered into the config.toml file with an echo command. The command has a syntax error and the expected result does not happen. This illustrates why the echo command is a poor choice when you need to verify the result. The correct way is to open the config.toml file with a text editor and add the line theme = “theme name”.

The theme will now work but you will not be able to configure its options and features. Every theme has a directory called exampleSite. Navigate to this and see that there is a config.toml file. Copy this file to the site’s base directory, replacing the semi-corrected config.toml file. Finally we have a site that works. Edit the config.toml file to make it your own.

The tutorial advises to install Hugo via snap packages or flatpaks.. This is both silly and counter-productive. The purpose of these installation methods is to provide cross-platform support. But Hugo is already cross-platform and is provided as an executable binary!! That is a primary reason for choosing Hugo in the first place. Therefore:

Browse to github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases Download the deb or tarball matching your platform. Install the deb or extract the tarball and move or copy hugo to /usr/local/bin

You’re done.