Mastering Hugo: Building a Custom Theme for My Personal Website

A few months ago, I decided it was time to take my personal website to the next level by creating a custom Hugo theme. In the past, I’d used pre-built themes, which offered convenience and speed when setting up my blog. However, I found myself limited in my ability to truly customize the experience and make it my own.

I’ve grown to like working with Static Site Generator, especially Hugo as it’s fast, SEO friendly and no moving parts - low maintainance. It’s an attractive choice for modern web projects.

The best way for me to have a better understanding how Hugo works is to build my custom themes.

By developing entire user interface from scratch, I’ve learned a lot about Hugo templateing system, which is actually Go template, content organisation, and its ecosystem.

I used the minimalist theme for my own website for a while before redesigning the current theme that I’m using now.

I published the minimalist theme on github if you wish to use and explore it.

For a full version - minimalist theme live demo

Tech Stack:

Hugo, Tailwind CSS