So, this is how it begins

I’ve been looking for a way to share thoughts about projects I had in mind, communicating how I’ve lived some experiences, or simply write down about anything. I first thought about wordpress since I’ve already used it, but I soon realised it wasn’t fit for what I wanted. I didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about how I should deploy or update my blog. I just wanted a quick and simple way to write a blog.

Hugo

I first saw jekyll, and I saw how easy it was to setup and maintain. I thought: “This is just the thing I wanted!” But then, I found Hugo. Like jekyll, Hugo is a static site generator where you write your pages like the following:

+++
date = "2016-05-17T23:59:14-04:00"
title = "Hello World"
description = "Welcome to my blog"
+++

# So, this is how it begins

I've been looking for a way to share thoughts about projects I had in mind,
communicating how I've lived some experiences, or simply write down about
anything. I first thought about [wordpress][] since I've already used it, but I
soon realised it wasn't fit for what I wanted. I didn't want to spend too much
time thinking about how I should deploy or update my blog. I just wanted a quick
and simple way to write a blog.

## Hugo

I first saw [jekyll](http://jekyllrb.com/), and I saw how easy it was to setup
and maintain. I thought: "This is just the thing I wanted!" But then, I found
**Hugo**. Like jekyll, Hugo is a static site generator where you write your
pages like the following:

except that jekyll is written in ruby while Hugo is written in Go. That’s what bought me after all since it had all the features jekyll could offer me, plus I couldn’t worry about time efficiency when generating my site between two consecutive writes.

Project tree

The typical project tree looks something like this:

├── archetypes
├── config.toml
├── content
│   └── post            // your posts
├── data
├── layouts
│   └── partials
├── static              // your static files
│   ├── css
│   ├── img
│   └── js
└── themes
    └── imperfect       // this is the theme I chose

All of the html, css and javascript final files that the final website is composed of are going to be generated by the Hugo engine.

Config

You have to configure your config.toml file for letting Hugo generate your website. Here’s my config file so far:

baseurl = "http://sim590.github.io"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "Simon Désaulniers"
theme = "imperfect"
preserveTaxonomyNames = true
paginate = 3
disqusShortname = "shortname"
googleAnalytics = ""

[params]
    # Sets the meta tag description, usually reserved for the main page
    description          = "HTML5 UP theme, Future Imperfect with some extra goodies, ported by Julio Pescador. Powered by Hugo"
    # This will appear on the top left of the navigation bar
    navbarTitle          = "Simon Désaulniers"
    # Social media buttons that appear on the sidebar
    socialAppearAtTop    = true
    socialAppearAtBottom = true
    # set this to the section name if section is not post
    #viewMorePostLink     = "/blog/"

# Optional Params
    categoriesByCount    = true
    includeReadingTime   = true
    # The set of favicons used are based on the write-up from this link:
    # https://github.com/audreyr/favicon-cheat-sheet
    # Please see the favicon partial template for more information
    loadFavicon          = false
    faviconVersion       = ""

    # Load custom CSS or JavaScript files. This replaces the deprecated params
    # minifiedFilesCSS and minifiedFilesJS. The variable is an array so that you
    # can load multiple files if necessary. You can also load the standard theme
    # files by adding the value, "default".
    # customCSS            = ["default", "/path/to/file"]
    # customJS             = ["default", "/path/to/file"]

    # Loading min files for exampleSite
    customCSS            = ["/css/main.min.css"]
    customJS             = ["/js/main.min.js"]

# parms.intro will appear on the sidebar
# This is optional, but it's suggested to use
[params.intro]
    header    = "Simon Désaulniers"

    paragraph = "There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary and the others."

    about     = "I like programming and new technologies. I like new ideas intending to bring power to the people like free distributed and secured software."

# This will also appear on the sidebar.
# A width of less than 100px is recommended
# This is optional
[params.intro.pic]
    src       = "/img/main/logo.png"
    # modify your picture in the shape of a circle or
    # future imperfect's hexagonal shape
    circle    = false
    imperfect = true
    width     = ""
    alt       = "Hugo Future Imperfect"

# Adjust the amount of recent posts on the sidebar.
# This is optional. The default value 5 will be used
#[params.postAmount]
#    sidebar = 2

# Set up your menu items in the navigation bar
# You can use identifier to prepend a font awesome icon to your text
[[menu.main]]
    name = "Blog"
    url = "/post"
    identifier = "fa fa-newspaper-o"
    weight = 1

[[menu.main]]
    name = "Categories"
    url = "/categories"
    weight = 2

[[menu.main]]
    name = "About"
    url = "/about"
    weight = 3

# Insert your username and the icon will apear on the page as long as
# socialAppearAtTop or socialAppearAtBottom is set to true in the params area
# The social media icons will appear on the sidebar
[social]
    github          = "sim590"
    bitbucket       = "sim590"
    jsfiddle        = ""
    codepen         = ""
    foursquare      = ""
    dribbble        = ""
    deviantart      = ""
    behance         = ""
    flickr          = ""
    instagram       = ""
    youtube         = ""
    vimeo           = "user51921435"
    vine            = ""
    medium          = ""
    wordpress       = ""
    tumblr          = ""
    xing            = ""
    linkedin        = "simon-désaulniers-86648097"
    slideshare      = ""
    stackoverflow   = ""
    reddit          = ""
    pinterest       = ""
    googleplus      = ""
    facebook        = ""
    facebook_admin  = ""
    twitter_domain  = ""
    twitter         = ""
    email           = "sim.desaulniers@gmail.com"

Exhausted

I’m not much of a writer yet and this is my first post.

THE END