Other setup options

If you don’t want to use Docsy as a Hugo Module (for example if you do not want to install Go) but still don’t want to copy the theme files into your own repo, you can use Docsy as a Git submodule. Using submodules also lets Hugo use the theme files from Docsy repo, though is more complicated to maintain than the Hugo Modules approach. This is the approach used in older versions of the Docsy example site, and is still supported. If you are using Docsy as a submodule but would like to migrate to Hugo Modules, see our migration guide.

Alternatively if you don’t want Hugo to have to get the theme files from an external repo (for example, if you want to customize and maintain your own copy of the theme directly, or your deployment choice requires you to include a copy of the theme in your repository), you can clone the files directly into your site source.

This guide provides instructions for both these options, along with common prerequisites.

Prerequisites and installation

Install Hugo

You need a recent extended version (we recommend version 0.73.0 or later) of Hugo to do local builds and previews of sites (like this one) that use Docsy. If you install from the release page, make sure to get the extended Hugo version, which supports SCSS; you may need to scroll down the list of releases to see it.

For comprehensive Hugo documentation, see gohugo.io.

On Linux

Be careful using sudo apt-get install hugo, as it doesn’t get you the extended version for all Debian/Ubuntu versions, and may not be up-to-date with the most recent Hugo version.

If you’ve already installed Hugo, check your version:

hugo version

If the result is v0.73 or earlier, or if you don’t see Extended, you’ll need to install the latest version. You can see a complete list of Linux installation options in Install Hugo. The following shows you how to install Hugo from the release page:

1. Go to the Hugo releases page.

2. In the most recent release, scroll down until you find a list of Extended versions.

3. Download the latest extended version (hugo_extended_0.9X_Linux-64bit.tar.gz).

4. Create a new directory:

   mkdir hugo
   

5. Extract the files you downloaded to hugo.

6. Switch to your new directory:

   cd hugo
   

7. Install Hugo:

   sudo install hugo /usr/bin
   

On macOS

Install Hugo using Brew.

As an npm module

You can install Hugo as an npm module using hugo-bin. This adds hugo-bin to your node_modules folder and adds the dependency to your package.json file. To install the extended version of Hugo:

npm install hugo-extended --save-dev

See the hugo-bin documentation for usage details.

Install PostCSS

To build or update your site’s CSS resources, you also need PostCSS to create the final assets. If you need to install it, you must have a recent version of NodeJS installed on your machine so you can use npm, the Node package manager. By default npm installs tools under the directory where you run npm install:

npm install -D autoprefixer
npm install -D postcss-cli

Starting in version 8 of postcss-cli, you must also separately install postcss:

npm install -D postcss

Note that versions of PostCSS later than 5.0.1 will not load autoprefixer if installed globally, you must use a local install.

Option 1: Docsy as a Git submodule

To create a new site and add the Docsy theme as a Git submodule, run the following commands:

1. Create the site:

   hugo new site myproject
   cd myproject
   git init
   

2. Add Docsy as a theme via a Git submodule:

   git submodule add --depth 1 https://github.com/google/docsy.git themes/docsy
   echo 'theme = "docsy"' >> config.toml
   

3. Install postCSS as instructed earlier.

4. Get Docsy dependencies:

   (cd themes/docsy && npm install)
   

5. Build or serve your new site using the usual Hugo commands, for example:

   hugo serve
   

To add the Docsy theme to an existing site, run the following commands from your project’s root directory:

git submodule add --depth 1 https://github.com/google/docsy.git themes/docsy
echo 'theme = "docsy"' >> config.toml
(cd themes/docsy && npm install)

Option 2: Clone the Docsy theme

If you don’t want to use a submodules (for example, if you want to customize and maintain your own copy of the theme directly, or your deployment choice requires you to include a copy of the theme in your repository), you can clone the theme into your project’s themes subdirectory.

To clone Docsy into your project’s theme folder, run the following commands from your project’s root directory:

cd themes
git clone https://github.com/google/docsy
cd docsy
npm install

For more information, see Theme Components on the Hugo site.

Preview your site

To build and preview your site locally:

cd myproject
hugo server

By default, your site will be available at http://localhost:1313. See the known issues on MacOS.

You may get Hugo errors for missing parameters and values when you try to build your site. This is usually because you’re missing default values for some configuration settings that Docsy uses - once you add them your site should build correctly. You can find out how to add configuration in Basic site configuration - we recommend copying the example site configuration even if you’re creating a site from scratch as it provides defaults for many required configuration parameters.

What’s next?

• Add some basic site configuration
• Add content and customize your site
• Get some ideas from our Example Site and other Examples.
• Publish your site.