Deploy a Hugo site
Hugo is a tool for generating static sites, written in Go. It is incredibly fast and has great high-level, flexible primitives for managing your content using Markdown and JSON.
In this guide, you will create a new Hugo application and deploy it using Cloudflare Pages. You will use the hugo CLI to create a new Hugo site.
Installing Hugo
First, install the Hugo CLI, using the specific instructions for your operating system below:
Linux
Your Linux distro’s package manager may include Hugo. If this is the case, install it directly using your distro’s package manager – for instance, in Ubuntu, run the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install hugo
If your package manager does not include Hugo or you would like to download a release directly, refer to the Manual section.
Homebrew (macOS)
If you use the package manager
Homebrew, run the brew install command in your terminal to install Hugo:
$ brew install hugo
Windows (Chocolatey)
If you use the package manager
Chocolatey, run the choco install command in your terminal to install Hugo:
$ choco install hugo --confirm
Windows (Scoop)
If you use the package manager
Scoop, run the scoop install command in your terminal to install Hugo:
$ scoop install hugo
Manual installation
The Hugo GitHub repository contains pre-built versions of the Hugo command-line tool for various operating systems, which can be found on the Releases page.
For more instruction on installing these releases, refer to Hugo’s install guide.
Before you continue
All of the framework guides assume you already have a fundamental understanding of git. If you are new to git, refer to this summarized git handbook on how to set up git on your local machine.
If you clone with SSH, you must generate SSH keys on each computer you use to push or pull from GitHub.
Related resources:
Creating a new project
With Hugo installed, create a new project by running the hugo new command in your terminal:
$ hugo new site my-hugo-site
Hugo sites use themes to customize the look and feel of the statically built HTML site. There are a number of themes available at themes.gohugo.io – for now, use the Terminal theme by running the following commands in your terminal:
$ cd my-hugo-site
$ git init
$ git submodule add https://github.com/panr/hugo-theme-terminal.git themes/terminal
$ git submodule update --init --recursive
You should also copy the default configuration provided by the theme into the config.toml file in your project’s directory. Take the following information and customize it per your site’s needs:
baseurl = "/"
languageCode = "en-us"
theme = "terminal"
paginate = 5
[params]
# dir name of your main content (default is `content/posts`).
# the list of set content will show up on your index page (baseurl).
contentTypeName = "posts"
# ["orange", "blue", "red", "green", "pink"]
themeColor = "orange"
# if you set this to 0, only submenu trigger will be visible
showMenuItems = 2
# show selector to switch language
showLanguageSelector = false
# set theme to full screen width
fullWidthTheme = false
# center theme with default width
centerTheme = false
# set a custom favicon (default is a `themeColor` square)
# favicon = "favicon.ico"
# set post to show the last updated
# If you use git, you can set `enableGitInfo` to `true` and then post will automatically get the last updated
showLastUpdated = false
# Provide a string as a prefix for the last update date. By default, it looks like this: 2020-xx-xx [Updated: 2020-xx-xx] :: Author
# updatedDatePrefix = "Updated"
# set all headings to their default size (depending on browser settings)
# it's set to `true` by default
# oneHeadingSize = false
[params.twitter]
# set Twitter handles for Twitter cards
# see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/optimize-with-cards/guides/getting-started#card-and-content-attribution
# do not include @
creator = ""
site = ""
[languages]
[languages.en]
languageName = "English"
title = "Terminal"
subtitle = "A simple, retro theme for Hugo"
owner = ""
keywords = ""
copyright = ""
menuMore = "Show more"
readMore = "Read more"
readOtherPosts = "Read other posts"
missingContentMessage = "Page not found..."
missingBackButtonLabel = "Back to home page"
[languages.en.params.logo]
logoText = "Terminal"
logoHomeLink = "/"
[languages.en.menu]
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "about"
name = "About"
url = "/about"
[[languages.en.menu.main]]
identifier = "showcase"
name = "Showcase"
url = "/showcase"
Creating a post
Create a new post to give your Hugo site some initial content. Run the hugo new command in your terminal to generate a new post:
$ hugo new posts/hello-world.md
Inside of hello-world.md, add some initial content to create your post. Remove the draft line in your post’s frontmatter when you are ready to publish the post. Any posts with draft: true set will be skipped by Hugo’s build process.
Creating a GitHub repository
Create a new GitHub repository by visiting repo.new. After your repository is set up, push your application to GitHub by running the following commands in your terminal:
$ git remote add origin https://github.com/yourgithubusername/githubrepo
$ git branch -M main
$ git push -u origin main
Deploying with Cloudflare Pages
Deploy your site to Pages by logging into the Cloudflare dashboard > Account Home > Pages and selecting Create a project. Select the new GitHub repository that you created and, in the Set up builds and deployments section, provide the following information:
| Configuration option | Value |
|---|---|
| Production branch | main |
| Build command | hugo |
| Build directory | public |
After completing configuration, click the Save and Deploy button. You should see Cloudflare Pages installing hugo and your project dependencies, and building your site, before deploying it.
After deploying your site, you will receive a unique subdomain for your project on *.pages.dev.
Every time you commit new code to your Hugo site, Cloudflare Pages will automatically rebuild your project and deploy it. You will also get access to
preview deployments
on new pull requests, so you can preview how changes look to your site before deploying them to production.
Using a specific Hugo version
You can set the environment variable HUGO_VERSION under Settings to use a specific version of Hugo.
For example, HUGO_VERSION: 0.92.1
Learn more
By completing this guide, you have successfully deployed your Hugo site to Cloudflare Pages. To get started with other frameworks, refer to the list of Framework guides .