📟 Publishing a blog using Hugo

August 25, 2025· 4 min · Gautham Chettiar

Table Of Contents

A no-nonsense opinionated guide to get your blog published using hugo, github, cloudflare pages and godaddy.

This publishing workflow is not meant for total beginners, but should be more of a hand-holding guide for someone:

who knows how to work with Git and have a github/gitlab account.
who are comfortable working with terminal commands rather than a GUI.
who is comfortable writing blogs in markdown, i.e: if you know how Hugo works and you are okay with it.
who can navigate around web to figure out stuff, especially if something goes wrong you should be able to google and fix it.

If you would rather prefer a more straightforward & less involved way to blog, consider an equally awesome bear blog instead.

Index :

Step 1 : Setting up Hugo
Step 2 : Writing your first post
Step 3 : Pushing to Github
Step 4 : Publishing using Cloudflare Pages
Step 5 (Optional) : Setting up custom domain

Step 1 : Setting up Hugo #

Install Hugo : Mac | Windows | Linux
Install Git : Mac | Windows | Linux

Choose a project folder, usually documents folder works :

bash
# Mac / Linux 
mkdir ~/Documents/Projects/; cd ~/Documents/Projects/
# Windows 
mkdir %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Projects & cd %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Projects

Choose a project name (for a personal blog something like <your-name>-blog just works) and run :
bash
```
hugo new site <your-name>-blog
```

A new directory would be created, step into that :

bash
# Mac / Linux 
cd ~/Documents/Projects/<your-name>-blog
# Windows 
cd %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Projects<your-name>-blog

Initialize git repository :
bash
```
git init
```

Theming

Choose a theme from - themes.gohugo.io (e.g: hugo-bearblog)
Go to git repository of that theme using download button -
Now there are 2 ways to use this in your blog [?] -
1. Simple but sometimes restrictive - directly add above git project as a submodule :
  bash
  git submodule add https://github.com/janraasch/hugo-bearblog.git
2. (recommended) Slight maintainance overhead but highly customizable -
  - Fork the project :
  - Add forked project as a submodule
    bash
    git submodule add https://github.com/gauthamchettiar/hugo-bearblog.git

Add above theme to hugo.toml -

bash
echo "theme = 'hugo-bearblog'" >> hugo.toml

Step 2 : Writing your first post #

Run below command to create a new post (⚠️ this is dependent on theme implementation, check theme specific README first) -
bash
```
hugo new blog/<post-subject>.md
```
A new markdown file would be created at - content/code/<post-subject>.md
Again, your file might look slightly different based on theme you choose.
Edit this markdown file to include your post content.
Preview your blog locally :
bash
```
hugo server -D
```

Go to web server link provided in output, usually http://localhost:1313/ :

output
...
Built in 72 ms
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1) 
Press Ctrl+C to stop

You should be able to preview your web page here. Also, this would be auto-updated every time you make changes to your markdown file and save it :

output
...
Change detected, rebuilding site (#36).
2025-10-06 13:43:53.971 +0100
Source changed /code/20251106_publishing_using_hugo.md
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Total in 4 ms

So, no need to run above command again and again.

Step 3 : Pushing to Github #

Create a new repository on github.
Copy <github-project-url> from above created project : e.g https://github.com/gauthamchettiar/gauthamchettiar.github.io

Run below set of commands from your hugo blog directory created in above steps :

bash
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin <github-project-url> # replace with copied URL
git push -u origin main

Step 4 : Publishing using Cloudflare Pages #

Signup for Cloudflare Pages account.
Search for “Workers & Pages”, and go to that page :
As of writing this post, this is at Compute (Workers) > Workers & Pages
Click on “Create Application” :
Select repository :
- Link your github account to cloudflare pages using “Add Account”, then
- Choose the repository where hugo blog is pushed to, and
- Click on “Begin Setup”.
Setup builds and deployments:
- Choose a name for your project, this will be deployed as:
  https://<project-name>.pages.dev
- Choose “Production branch” as “master”, then
- Choose “Framework Preset” as “Hugo”, and
- Click on “Save and Deploy”
Your deployment would finish and you would be given a link where your app is deployed :
This is a live link that you can immediately start sharing with everyone.

Step 5 (Optional) : Setting up custom domain #

While this is not required, it’s nice to have a permanent address on internet.

Come up with a good available domain name for your blog (believe me this is the hardest part of all).
Buy a domain on GoDaddy, or from any registrar where you find registration and renewal options to be cheapest.
Go back to cloudflare “Workers & Pages” > “Custom Domain” > “Set up a custom domain” :
Add a domain, it could include a subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com) if you wish:
Once you click on “Activate domain” it would add your record to it’s DNS.
In order for cloudflare to manage DNS records, you need to add nameservers displayed in Cloudflare to your domain registrar (GoDaddy in this case) :
It could take upto 24 hours for entire thing to be up and running!

Since, websites keep getting updated pretty often. Steps and Screenshots provided here might change in future.

I will try my best to keep this post updated regularly, for future visitors 16th Dec 2025 is the last day I verified that all steps work properly.

Feel free to contact me in any of the socials provided in case you could not get any of the above steps to work.