Deploy a Hugo site

Hugo Open external link 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.

​​ Before you continue

All of the framework guides assume you already have a fundamental understanding of Git Open external link . If you are new to Git, refer to this summarized Git handbook Open external link on how to set up Git on your local machine.

If you clone with SSH, you must generate SSH keys Open external link on each computer you use to push or pull from GitHub.

Refer to the GitHub documentation Open external link and Git documentation Open external link for more information.

Go to Deploying with Cloudflare Pages if you already have a Hugo site hosted with your Git provider.

​​ Install Hugo

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 Open external link , run the brew install command in your terminal to install Hugo:

$ brew install hugo

​​ Windows (Chocolatey)

If you use the package manager Chocolatey Open external link , run the choco install command in your terminal to install Hugo:

$ choco install hugo --confirm

​​ Windows (Scoop)

If you use the package manager Scoop Open external link , 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 Open external link .

For more instruction on installing these releases, refer to Hugo’s documentation Open external link .

​​ Create a new project

With Hugo installed, refer to Hugo’s Quick Start Open external link to create your project or 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 Open external link – for now, use the Terminal theme Open external link 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"

​​ Create 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.

​​ Create a GitHub repository

Create a new GitHub repository by visiting repo.new Open external link . After creating a new repository, prepare and push your local application to GitHub by running the following commands in your terminal:

$ git remote add origin https://github.com/<your-gh-username>/<repository-name>
$ git branch -M main
$ git push -u origin main

​​ Deploy with Cloudflare Pages

To deploy your site to Pages:

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard Open external link and select your account.
2. In Account Home, select Workers & Pages > Create application > Pages > Connect to Git.
3. Select the new GitHub repository that you created and, in the Set up builds and deployments section, provide the following information:

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.

​​ Use a specific Hugo version

To use a specific version of Hugo Open external link , create the HUGO_VERSION environment variable in your Pages project > Settings > Environment variables. Set the value as the Hugo version you want to specify.

For example, HUGO_VERSION: 0.110.0.

​​ 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.