How to Create a Personal Blog With Hugo and Netlify

In this article, I am going to share the step-by-step method I followed while building a blog website using a static site generator Hugo and deploying it to Netlify. I encountered some small errors during the process; I am gonna entertain those as well. Let's get started.

As I am using Windows, commands may be different, follow official docs while building your own website using Hugo. Also, I am running all commands on git bash.

Step 1

Create any folder on the Desktop and open git bash. Now, time to install Hugo.

choco install hugo -confirm

Or if you need the “extended” Sass/SCSS version: for some supported theme. Better install it from cmd by running it as an administrator.

choco install hugo-extended -confirm

Step 2

Now, it's time to create a new website and add a cool theme to it. You can choose any theme from the Hugo theme library. Run the below commands.

// Choose your site name in place of blognerd

hugo new site blognerd

The above will create a new Hugo site in a folder named blognerd.

It's time to add a theme to the site. See the theme library for a list of themes to consider. I am using the Beautiful Hugo theme.

cd blognerd
git init

You can access the GitHub repo of themes by just clicking the download button on the theme page as you can see in the above picture. Now, download the theme from GitHub and add it to the site's theme directory.

git submodule add https://github.com/halogenica/beautifulhugo.git  themes/beautifulhugo

Now, add the theme to the site configuration:

echo theme = \"beautifulhugo\" >> config.toml

Step 3

It's time to add some content to the newly created site. You can also add them manually, but I am creating this using commands.

hugo new posts/my-first-post.md

Now, open the whole folder in any code editor, I am using VS Code. Edit your post as you wish. You can see the screenshot of my editor below for a reference of the posts files.

The above content may be different for the theme you are using. I am going to add one of my article contents to this post, for example, see the below screenshot. You can edit metadata between --- accordingly.

Step 4

Now, is the time to test the site we created by running the Hugo server.

hugo server -D  //run only this command 

Start building sites …
hugo v0.105.0-0e3b42b4a9bdeb4d866210819fc6ddcf51582ffa+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2022-10-28T12:29:05Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

                   | EN
-------------------+------
  Pages            |  10
  Paginator pages  |   0
  Non-page files   |   0
  Static files     | 184
  Processed images |   0
  Aliases          |   2
  Sitemaps         |   1
  Cleaned          |   0

Built in 4884 ms

You can check the live view on http://localhost:1313/

Here’s my live view...

Step 5

It's time to give the final touch to the newly created site. You can customize the theme or configure the site by opening up config.toml in a text editor and edit accordingly. In this theme, I took help from their GitHub readme.

Now, time to build a static site. Run the below command after closing the Hugo server by pressing Ctrl+c

hugo -D  //run only this command

Start building sites …
hugo v0.105.0-0e3b42b4a9bdeb4d866210819fc6ddcf51582ffa+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2022-10-28T12:29:05Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

                   | EN
-------------------+------
  Pages            |  16
  Paginator pages  |   0
  Non-page files   |   0
  Static files     | 184
  Processed images |   0
  Aliases          |   5
  Sitemaps         |   1
  Cleaned          |   0

Total in 763 ms

Step 6

Everything is now set. You can add more blog content or customize the site according to your requirement. Now, the final work is to deploy it to Netlify.

I have Netlify CLI installed, so I am going to the final step. You can install it by going to Netlify official docs and login in to your account.

After installing, run the following commands:

netlify dev

It will open the Netlify live server on http://localhost:8888. After checking everything on your site, close the Netlify server by pressing Ctrl+c. Time to deploy..

netlify deploy  //run only this command 

This folder isn't linked to a site yet
? What would you like to do? (Use arrow keys)
> Link this directory to an existing site
  +  Create & configure a new site

Follow the instruction and select the (.) directory. Now deploy production.

netlify deploy --prod

// select public directory 

Hurray! Now, you can access your live website with the Netlify domain from the Netlify dashboard. I have created one other site and it's deployed, check my live website here...

If You ❤️ My Content! Connect With Me on Twitter or Supports Me By Buying Me A Coffee☕

Also published here