Today I Learned: Hugo Static Site Generator 🚀

Today marks the beginning of my daily learning journey, and what better way to start than by learning the very tool I’m using to build this blog!

What is Hugo?

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that’s blazingly fast. It takes your content written in Markdown and transforms it into a complete website using templates and themes.

Key Things I Discovered:

⚡ Speed: Hugosss builds sites incredibly fast - we’re talking milliseconds for most sites. Perfect for that instant feedback loop when developing.

📁 Simple Structure:

content/     # Your markdown files
themes/      # Themes directory
hugo.toml    # Configuration file
public/      # Generated static site

🎨 Themes: The ecosystem has amazing themes like the loficode theme I’m using - it even has ambient sounds for that cozy coding vibe!

Commands I Learned Today

# Create a new site
hugo new site my-blog

# Create a new post
hugo new posts/my-post.md

# Start development server
hugo server -D

# Build the site
hugo

The “Aha!” Moments

1. Front Matter Magic: The +++ sections at the top of posts control everything - dates, tags, whether it’s a draft, etc.

2. Live Reload: Save a file and instantly see changes in the browser. No build step needed during development!

3. Theme Configuration: The hugo.toml file is where all the magic happens - profile info, social links, site behavior.

What Surprised Me

The learning curve was gentler than expected. Within an hour, I had a functioning blog with a beautiful theme, ambient sounds, and all my content organized.

Tomorrow’s Goal

I want to dive deeper into Hugo’s templating system and maybe customize some aspects of my theme. Also planning to set up automated deployment!

Coffee count for this learning session: ☕☕ (definitely needed the caffeine boost for all that configuration!)