Introduction

Welcome to my first blog post! Today, I want to share my experience setting up this blog using Hugo and deploying it on Cloudflare Pages. If you’re looking for a fast, free, and modern way to host your personal site or blog, this combination is hard to beat.

Why Hugo?

Hugo is one of the most popular static site generators, and for good reason:

  • Speed: Hugo is built in Go and is incredibly fast at building sites
  • Flexibility: Extensive theme ecosystem and customization options
  • Simplicity: Write content in Markdown, Hugo handles the rest
  • No Dependencies: Single binary with no runtime dependencies

Setting Up Hugo

Installation

Getting Hugo up and running is straightforward. On most systems, you can install it with a package manager:

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# macOS
brew install hugo

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install hugo

# Windows (with chocolatey)
choco install hugo-extended

Creating a New Site

Once installed, creating a new site takes just one command:

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hugo new site my-awesome-blog
cd my-awesome-blog

Adding a Theme

I chose the PaperMod theme for its clean, modern design and excellent feature set:

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# Using Hugo Modules (recommended)
hugo mod init github.com/username/my-blog

Then add the theme to your hugo.toml:

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[module]
  [[module.imports]]
    path = "github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod"

Deploying to Cloudflare Pages

Cloudflare Pages offers free hosting with some excellent benefits:

  • Global CDN: Your site is served from edge locations worldwide
  • Free SSL: Automatic HTTPS for your custom domain
  • Git Integration: Automatic deployments on every push
  • Unlimited Bandwidth: No surprise bills

Setup Steps

  1. Push your Hugo site to a GitHub repository
  2. Log into Cloudflare Dashboard and navigate to Pages
  3. Create a new project and connect your GitHub repo
  4. Set the build command to hugo and output directory to public
  5. Deploy!

What I Learned

This project taught me several valuable lessons:

  • Static site generators are powerful and efficient
  • Modern hosting platforms make deployment trivial
  • Writing in Markdown is a joy
  • Taking notes as you learn helps solidify knowledge

What’s Next?

I plan to continue building out this site and sharing more content about:

  • Software development best practices
  • Cloud technologies and DevOps
  • Programming tutorials and tips
  • Tech industry insights

Stay tuned for more posts!

Have questions or suggestions? Feel free to reach out through the links on my About page.