I am relaunching my blog! I have decided to use Hugo after much internal debate, and strong lobbying from all the sleazy corporate bag-men that are constantly trying to bribe me with buzz words . I will always Ruby and use it every day, but for my blog I gotta go. So easy, static and fast! As my first post I will document how I made this work.

My Architecture

Local is Mac

My workhorse is my heavily modified (via cover stickers) Macbook Pro. I may replicate the setup on my linux box, and if I do I’ll add notes for important tweaks to this process.

Host is Dreamhost

My host is Dreamhost shared hosting, because I have an unlimited plan with them, and they are fundamentally awesome in my experience, but this guide will probably work for whatever host you have. Deploying a static site means I don’t need an app server that eats barbells for breakfast.

Configured my web directory as:

railsbling.com

Build is Hugo

Hugo is very customizable and pluguzable, so I can add Disqus comments, and SEO sharing bars to my posts, and other cool stuff (all of which I have yet to tackle). Static doesn’t need to mean boring. There is also a wide range of possibilities with Javascript.

Theme is redlounge

Look nice right?!? Have that source.

HOW TO HUGO

Enough evangelism, let’s talk code .

Setup the Web Host

Setup my computer to connect to my server.

I used ssh keys and my ~/.ssh/config so I can just ssh <server name alias> without any fuss. The one thing that always trips me up when I setup a new server for key -based auth is the permissions on the authorized_keys file.

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then on my server I will have to build Hugo, and then I call a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while just to catch up.

root=~/root
mkdir -p ~/debs
cd ~/debs
wget https://github.com/spf13/hugo/releases/download/v0.14/hugo_0.14_amd64.deb
mkdir -p $root
for d in *.deb; do echo "Installing $d"; dpkg -x $d $root; done

Then add Hugo’s bin dir to my $PATH

echo 'export PATH=~/root/usr/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

I will be pushing my site’s repo onto the server as a remote from my local. So prepare for that.

mkdir ~/railsbling.git
cd ~/railsbling.git
git init
git config receive.denyCurrentBranch ignore

Then checkout the theme I chose onto the server. I picked redlounge (for now) from the options at the master theme repo.

git clone https://github.com/tmaiaroto/hugo-redlounge.git ~/redlounge.git

Then tweak for my needs and make it my ~/railsbling.git/.git/hooks/post-receive :

cat ~/railsbling.git/.git/hooks/post-receive

SITE_REPO=$HOME/railsbling.git
THEME_REPO=$HOME/redlounge.git
SITE_TMP=$HOME/tmp/railsbling
THEME_TMP=$HOME/tmp/railsbling/themes/redlounge
SITE_WWW=$HOME/railsbling.com

git clone $SITE_REPO $SITE_TMP
git clone $THEME_REPO $THEME_TMP
cd $SITE_TMP
$HOME/root/usr/bin/hugo --theme="redlounge" -s $SITE_TMP -d $SITE_WWW -b "https://www.railsbling.com"
rm -Rf $SITE_TMP
exit

Setup Local Development

Homebrew continues to kick ass and take names. Give it the name “hugo”, and brew will kick its ass.

brew install hugo

Create this website and move in.

hugo new railsbling.com ~/Documents/hugo/railsbling
cd ~/Documents/hugo/railsbling

Create some pages

hugo new about.md
hugo new cv.md
...

The top of each file before the +++ is called the frontmatter, and it is the part where all the fancy config happens on a per post level, if any. For now ignore that.

Below the +++ is regular Markdown. So Blaze that Fireball and write some stuff in there.

Install the themes. Just grab them all initially so I can try out a bunch and find the one I like.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/spf13/hugoThemes themes

From the directory listing, pick a theme that has a name I am particularly drawn to, like “redlounge”, and execute it without prejudice.

ls themes
hugo server --theme=redlounge --buildDrafts --watch

Now I have the site running locally. Now comes the actual work.

Git it.

git init
git remote add live ssh://railsbling.com/home/<username>/railsbling.git
git add .
git commit -m "Hot Toddy"
git push --set-upstream live master

Like magic, and unless I missed something in my writeup, my new site will deploy and be live!

Hero image (cropped) by Barthelemy de Mazenod