Creating the project

hugo new site <HUGO_PROJECT>
cd <HUGO_PROJECT>
git init

Adding a theme

Select a theme from hugo’s theme page .

git submodule add <THEME_URL> themes/<THEME_NAME>

Example using Notepadium theme

git submodule add https://github.com/cntrump/hugo-notepadium.git themes/hugo-notepadium

Add entry the following entry to config.toml

theme = "<THEME_NAME>"

Most themes will provide instructions on how to setup config.toml to use various components of the theme. For Notepadium replace the contents of config.toml with the default values given in the description of the theme.

baseURL = "https://example.com"
title = "Notepadium"
theme = "hugo-notepadium"
copyright = "©2019 Notepadium."

languageCode = "zh-cn"
hasCJKLanguage = true

enableRobotsTXT = true

# Enable Disqus
#disqusShortname = "XXX"

# Google Analytics
#googleAnalytics = "UA-123-45"

[markup.highlight]
codeFences = true
noClasses = false

[markup.goldmark.renderer]
unsafe = true  # enable raw HTML in Markdown

[params]
style = "auto"  # default: auto. light: light theme, dark: dark theme, auto: based on system.
dateFormat = "Monday, January 2, 2006"  # if unset, default is "2006-01-02"
logo = ""  # if you have a logo png
slogan = "100% JavaScript-free"
license = ""  # CC License
fullRss = false # Puts entire HTML post into rss 'description' tag. If unset, default is false.

[params.comments]
enable = false  # En/Disable comments globally, default: false. You can always enable comments on per page.

[params.math]
enable = false  # optional: true, false. Enable globally, default: false. You can always enable math on per page.
use = "katex"  # option: "katex", "mathjax". default: "katex"

[params.syntax]
use = "none"  # builtin: "prismjs", "hljs". "none" means Chroma
theme = "xcode"
darkTheme = "xcode-dark"  # apply this theme in dark mode

[params.share]
enable = false
addThisId = ""
inlineToolId = ""

[params.nav]
showCategories = true       # /categories/
showTags = true             # /tags/

# custom navigation items

[[params.nav.custom]]
title = "About"
url = "/about"

[[params.nav.custom]]
title = "Hugo"
url = "https://gohugo.io/"

# for chinese
[params.beian]
  icp = ""
  gongan = ""

Add a new post

Create a new post and add some content.

hugo new posts/<FILENAME>.md

The file will be located in content/posts/.md

Run the site locally

hugo server -D

Note: ‘-D’ flag is used to force the rendering of draft posts.

Remove or make draft = false for each header of post before deploying it.

Deploy

Hugo docs have extensive instruction for deployment to various platforms.

Deploying to github

Create a new repository
Create a file .github/workflows/gh-pages.yml with content

name: github pages

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main  # Set a branch to deploy
  pull_request:

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          submodules: true  # Fetch Hugo themes (true OR recursive)
          fetch-depth: 0    # Fetch all history for .GitInfo and .Lastmod

      - name: Setup Hugo
        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
        with:
          hugo-version: 'latest'
          # extended: true

      - name: Build
        run: hugo --minify

      - name: Deploy
        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          publish_dir: ./public

Add/Edit the following entries in config.toml

baseURL = 'https://<GITHUB_USERNAME>.github.io/<GITHUB_REPO_NAME>/'
canonifyURLs = true

Commit changes and push to the repository
NOTE: push to the main branch as the github workflow script is configured as so. To push to main branch do
```
git checkout -b main
```
then push to main
```
git push origin main
```
or if it didn’t work try with -f flag like so
```
git push -f origin main
```
if you want to use master branch change occurance of all ‘main’ to ‘master’ (ie lines 6 and 29 if you used the above gh-pages.yml).
Go to repo settings -> pages. In sources expand drop down menu and select gh-pages and click save.