Hugo Custom Theme Usage and Programming Tutorial

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In this tutorial, we will dive into the process of creating and using a custom Hugo theme, allowing you to give your blog a distinctive and eye-catching design. A unique theme can help your blog stand out and reflect your personal style or brand, making it more appealing to your audience. If you haven’t set up Hugo yet, please check out this tutorial to get started with the basics

How Hugo Themes Work

Hugo operates on a structured loading process, which is essential to understand before customizing your theme:

  1. Loading the Main Framework: The page loads using the baseof.html file.
  2. Template Matching: It then matches the page’s Kind attribute with the relevant template file located in the /layouts directory.
  3. Executing Template Syntax: The template syntax is executed, loading the necessary sub-modules.
  4. Generating Static Pages: Finally, Hugo generates the complete static page.

Template Matching Priority

When it comes to matching templates, Hugo prioritizes custom layouts in the following order:

  • 'your blog'/layout takes precedence over 'your blog'/theme/'your theme'/layout.

How to Create a Custom Hugo Theme

Creating a custom theme in Hugo is straightforward. Follow these steps:

  1. In any folder, hold SHIFT and right-click to select “Open PowerShell window here”. Step 1
  2. In the PowerShell window, type hugo new theme 'your theme' Step 2
  3. Change to the newly created theme directory, rename hugo.toml to theme.toml. Step 3a Step 3b
  4. open theme.toml in a text editor. Add the theme = 'your theme name' and other theme configurations. Step 4
  5. Finsh. Refer to the directory’s comments to further customize your Hugo theme:
./themes
├── yourTheme/
│   ├── archetypes/ #custom front matter in markdown
│   │  └── default.md/
│   ├── assets/ # style and script
│   │  ├── css/ # style
│   │  │   └── main.css/
│   │  ├── js/ #script
│   │  └──── main.js/
│   ├── content/ #generated automatically by hugo new theme command.
│   ├── data/
│   ├── i18n/ #mulit-language
│   ├── layouts/ #web layout
│   │  ├── partials/ #submodules of web
│   │  │   ├── head/ #style and script (access from head.html)
│   │  │   │   ├── css.html
│   │  │   │   └── js.html
│   │  │   ├── footer.html #copyright
│   │  │   ├── head.html #web configuration
│   │  │   ├── header.html
│   │  │   ├── menu.html #navbar (access from header.html)
│   │  │   └── terms.html 
│   │  ├── baseof.html #base of web
│   │  ├── home.html #home page
│   │  ├── list.html #list of post
│   │  ├── single.html #base of post web
│   │  ├── taxonomy.html # base of tags or categories webs
│   │  └── term.html # list of tags or categories
│   └── static/ #web icon
└── hugo.toml #hugo theme configuration

How to Use Your Custom Theme

  1. Open your Hugo blog directory and locate the hugo.toml file using a text editor. Step 5
  2. Add the theme = 'your theme name' to specify your custom theme. Step 6
  3. Copy your custom theme folder and paste it into the /themes/ directory of your Hugo blog. Step 7a
  4. Open PowerShell again in your blog directory by holding SHIFT and right-clicking. Step 7b
  5. Finish. Run hugo server or hugo to check your custom theme’s apply. Step 8

Additional Considerations

Referencing Styles and Scripts

To effectively manage your styles and scripts, ensure they are located in the appropriate folders:

  • CSS styles should be in ./assets/css/.
  • JavaScript scripts should be in ./assets/js/.

In your theme files, define the following code:

In layouts/partials/head/:

For CSS (in /css.html):

{{ $style := resources.Get "css/style.css" }}
{{ $a := $style | resources.ToCSS }}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $a.Permalink }}">

For JS (in /js.html):

{{ $js := resources.Get "js/main.js" | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
<script src="{{ $js.Permalink }}"></script>

Conclusion

Congratulations! You now have the knowledge to create and use a custom Hugo theme that enhances your blog’s visual appeal. By following this tutorial, you can ensure your site not only performs well but also reflects your unique style and personality. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out in the comments below. Happy blogging with Hugo!