Learning and adopting Hugo on this blog

Sat, Apr 3, 2021 3-minute read

This is my very first post exported from Hugo… Let’s learn!

  • Properties don’t work.
  • Title is not present
  • Date is not present

I try to move properties to the top. Does not work I move it on the subtree. I have included a title I have exported when cursor was inside the subtree and seems that is working!

My learning curve

First you need to understand Hugo

I started with Hugo (https://gohugo.io/) by experimenting with one beautiful theme https://themes.gohugo.io/anatole/, thanks to this the theme and the sample project I started to understand better how Hugo worked.

The main concept that took me time to understand was how Hugo structured the project and the same time how the hell generates the published site code.

You can follow this link to know how a Hugo project is strucutred:

Installing and configuring the site was not too hard, the problem was getting used to the publishing process.

Initially I thought that in some dir will be the generated files, but then realized that Hugo serves the content from memory so unless you specify the export there is no generated file.

Once I understood the content generation and the structure then I started moving to the next problem. How I migrate / publish from my Org-mode?

Adding ox-hugo

This blog is mainly focused in the concept on how with the minimal over-enginering I can post, as I commented in previous posts.

After managing to reduce the blog in one org file, one css and publishing and exporting with Emacs I found myself no too happy with the result because the lack of UI-kindyness. Then I returned to investigate in Hugo but I wanted to keep my posts and also the concept on being minimal avoiding server side and other kind of language to process or store simply text.

So I revisited my Emacs configuration, I tried with Doom Emacs, but again the same… I find it over-bloated for just editing…

I make up again my .emacs config with the esential and I added ox-hugo.

Instructions here:

Installation is a piece of cake, is just installing the package from MELPA, the problem (at least I had that problem) is understanding how the meta-data works and how you export the org files.

In the Auto-exportation section I had the tips and tools to adopt the ox-hugo workflow here is the relevant info.

As you can see on the beginning of this post you will find the final steps when I finally realized the meta-tags needed and how to export the org file (subtree in fact) to create automatically the post.

The most relevant thing is also remarked in the documentation:

  • HUGO_BASE_DIR
  • HUGO_SECTION

These properties once setted will allow org file to reach the correct destination folder and then have the posts published on place.

Putting all together

Steps:

  1. Start with Hugo and some Theme
  2. Configure and modify the Theme and make it “yours”
  3. Go to Emacs and add ox-hugo
  4. Test with some org file configuring and exporting
  5. Ready to go!

As you can see is not sooo hard, this could be your next week-end project if you are interested! Enjoy!