Getting started

Create a Hugo site from scratch, install the theme from a release or local checkout, configure its outputs and run it.

This is a from-scratch walkthrough for a new site. Existing Hugo sites can begin at Choose how to install the theme.

1. Install the tools#

Install Hugo 0.128.0 or newer, Go, Node.js/npm and Git. Confirm them before creating files:

hugo version
go version
node --version
npm --version
git --version

The example is verified with Hugo 0.164.0. Use Hugo Extended because the CSS pipeline invokes Tailwind through Hugo Pipes.

2. Create an empty site#

hugo new site example-docs
cd example-docs
git init
hugo mod init example.com/example-docs
npm init -y
npm install --save-dev @tailwindcss/cli@^4.1.0

hugo new site creates hugo.toml, content/, layouts/, static/ and other standard Hugo directories. hugo mod init creates go.mod, which records the theme dependency.

3. Choose how to install the theme#

Released Hugo Module — recommended#

Add the module import to the new site’s hugo.toml:

[module]
  [[module.imports]]
    path = "github.com/projectious-work/brand-theme-hugo-vanilla"

Fetch and pin a released version:

hugo mod get github.com/projectious-work/brand-theme-hugo-vanilla@v0.3.2
hugo mod tidy

Commit go.mod and go.sum. Production sites should use a release tag, not a moving branch.

Local checkout — offline development or theme changes#

Clone or unpack the theme beside the site:

workspace/
├── brand-theme-hugo-vanilla/
└── example-docs/

Keep the same module import, then add a local replacement to the site’s go.mod:

replace github.com/projectious-work/brand-theme-hugo-vanilla => ../brand-theme-hugo-vanilla

Hugo now reads the local checkout without downloading the module. Do not commit a machine-specific replace line in a production site; remove it and run hugo mod tidy before releasing.

4. Configure the feature outputs#

Copy the complete commented configuration from Configuration into the site’s root hugo.toml—the file created by hugo new site. The output-format blocks enable search, print views, page Markdown and llms.txt; the markup block enables class-based syntax highlighting, heading tables of contents and math.

5. Create the first pages#

content/
├── _index.md
└── docs/
    ├── _index.md
    └── first-page.md

+++
title = "Example documentation"
tagline = "Documentation for the example product."
+++

+++
title = "Documentation"
description = "Product and operations documentation."
weight = 10
+++

+++
title = "First page"
description = "The first page in the documentation set."
weight = 10
icon = "book"
+++

Write the page in ordinary Markdown.

6. Run and verify locally#

hugo server --disableFastRender

Open the URL printed by Hugo. Check the sidebar, search, language and appearance menus, code colours and keyboard focus. A production build is hugo --minify.

Next steps#

1. Read Configuration and set site identity and integrations.
2. Follow the Content authoring guide.
3. Review the feature map.
4. Adopt the maintenance workflow before the first release.