Learning Hugo

Hugo is an open source static site generator that you can use to build websites with really fast performance at low cost.

In contrast with open source content management systems like WordPress that are feature-rich and have more substantial system requirements, static site generators produce static files. That’s it! All you need to host your website is a web server - no database or server-side language is required. You can even host your site on an object storage service, like Amazon S3. In fact, that’s how learninghugo.com is hosted.

While Hugo has grown in popularity and added many features since its initial release in 2013, one thing that I personally found to be lacking when using Hugo for the first time is easy-to-understand documentation.

While the official documentation is thorough, it introduces a lot of terminology and concepts all at once, making Hugo appear to be more confusing and difficult to use than it actually is.

In fact, Hugo IS easy to use, and you can get started building a simple website with just a few files. At the same time, it packs a lot of power, enabling you to use Hugo for sophisticated web applications.

This tutorial is intended to be a gentle introduction to Hugo for the first-time user. It doesn’t replace the official docs, but after working through this tutorial, they will hopefully be easier to digest.

Learning Hugo is an ongoing project, and I’ll add tutorials on more topics. If you have feedback or would like to see a tutorial on a particular topic, just shoot me an email.