Hugo Quickstart Guide

Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators, known for its speed and simple deployment. This guide walks you through building and publishing your first Hugo site.

Installing Hugo

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The installation method depends on your operating system:

• macOS: brew install hugo
• Ubuntu / Debian: sudo apt install hugo
• Windows: use Chocolatey or Scoop: choco install hugo
• Other platforms: download the corresponding binary from the Hugo Releases page

Verify the installation:

hugo version

Creating a new site

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Use hugo new site to quickly scaffold a site skeleton:

hugo new site quickstart
cd quickstart

This generates the standard directory structure: content/, layouts/, static/, and more.

Adding a theme

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A Hugo site needs a theme to render pages. Take Hextra as an example:

git init
git submodule add https://github.com/imfing/hextra.git themes/hextra

Then declare the theme in hugo.toml:

theme = 'hextra'

Writing your first post

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Use hugo new to create a post, with front matter in TOML format:

hugo new posts/my-first-post.md

The front matter contains metadata such as date and title, while the body is written in Markdown, supporting code blocks, tables, images, and more:

+++
date = '2026-08-14T17:55:41+08:00'
draft = false
title = 'My First Post'
+++

## Introduction

This is **bold** text and this is *italic* text.

Local preview

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Start the development server and Hugo will auto-refresh the page on file changes:

hugo server -D

Open http://localhost:1313 in your browser for a live preview.

Building and deploying

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Before publishing, generate the static files:

hugo

The output goes to the public/ directory by default; host it on GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Vercel to go live.

Summary

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The Hugo ecosystem is mature and the community is active. Whether it is a personal blog or a documentation site, Hugo is a trustworthy choice. Try it out now!