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.
Finally, you can install Docsy as an NPM package.
This guide provides instructions for all of these options, along with common prerequisites.
Prerequisites
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:
Go to the Hugo releases page.
In the most recent release, scroll down until you find a list of Extended versions.
Download the latest extended version (
hugo_extended_0.9X_Linux-64bit.tar.gz
).Create a new directory:
mkdir hugo
Extract the files you downloaded to
hugo
.Switch to your new directory:
cd hugo
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-extended. To install the extended version of Hugo:
npm install hugo-extended --save-dev
Node: Get the latest LTS release
If you have Node installed already, check your version of Node. For example:
node -v
Install or upgrade your version of Node to the active LTS release. We recommend using nvm to manage your Node installation (Linux command shown):
nvm install --lts
Install PostCSS
To build or update your site’s CSS resources, you’ll also need
PostCSS. Install it using the Node package manager,
npm
.
IMPORTANT: Check your Node version
The PostCSS package installed by some older versions of Node is incompatible with Docsy. Check your version of Node against the active LTS release and upgrade, if necessary. For details, see Node: Get the latest LTS release.From your project root, run this command:
npm install --save-dev autoprefixer postcss-cli
Option 1: Docsy as a Git submodule
For a new site
To create a new site and add the Docsy theme as a Git submodule, run the following commands:
Create the site:
hugo new site myproject cd myproject git init
Install postCSS as instructed earlier.
Follow the instructions below for an existing site.
For an existing site
To add the Docsy theme to an existing site, run the following commands from your project’s root directory:
Install Docsy as a Git submodule:
git submodule add https://github.com/google/docsy.git themes/docsy cd themes/docsy git checkout v0.11.0
To work from the development version of Docsy (not recommended), run the following command instead:
git submodule add --depth 1 https://github.com/google/docsy.git themes/docsy
Add Docsy as a theme, for example:
echo 'theme: docsy' >> hugo.yaml
Tip
As of Hugo 0.110.0, the default config base filename was changed tohugo.*
fromconfig.*
. If you are using hugo 0.110 or above, consider renaming yourconfig.*
tohugo.*
.Get Docsy dependencies:
(cd themes/docsy && npm install)
Important: read the Docsy NPM install side-effect note.
(Optional but recommended) To avoid having to repeat the previous step every time you update Docsy, consider adding NPM scripts like the following to your project’s
package.json
file:{ "...": "...", "scripts": { "get:submodule": "git submodule update --init --depth 1", "_prepare:docsy": "cd themes/docsy && npm install", "prepare": "npm run get:submodule && npm run _prepare:docsy", "...": "..." }, "...": "..." }
Every time you run
npm install
from your project root, theprepare
script will fetch the latest version of Docsy and its dependencies.
From this point on, build and serve your site using the usual Hugo commands, for example:
hugo serve
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 at v0.11.0 into your project’s theme
folder, run
the following commands from your project’s root directory:
cd themes
git clone -b v0.11.0 https://github.com/google/docsy
cd docsy
npm install
Important: read the Docsy NPM install side-effect note.
To work from the development version of Docsy (not recommended unless, for
example, you plan to upstream changes to Docsy), omit the
-b v0.11.0
argument from the clone command above.
Then consider setting up an NPM prepare script, as documented in Option 1.
For more information, see Theme Components on the Hugo site.
Option 3: Docsy as an NPM package
You can use Docsy as an NPM module as follows:
Create your site and specify Docsy as the site theme:
hugo new site --format yaml myproject cd myproject echo "theme: docsy\nthemesDir: node_modules" >> hugo.yaml
Install Docsy, and postCSS (as instructed earlier):
npm init -y npm install --save-dev google/docsy#semver:0.11.0 autoprefixer postcss-cli
Important: read the Docsy NPM install side-effect note.
Build or serve your new site using the usual Hugo commands, specifying the path to the Docsy theme files. For example, build your site as follows:
$ hugo Start building sites … ...
Error: failed to load modules
If Hugo reports the following error when building your site (#2116):
Error: failed to load modules: module "github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome" not found in ".../myproject/node_modules/github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome" ...
Then run the following command and try again:
npm rebuild
As an alternative to specifying a themesDir
, on some platforms, you can
instead create a symbolic link to the Docsy theme directory as follows (Linux
commands shown, executed from the site root folder):
mkdir -p themes
pushd themes
ln -s ../node_modules/docsy
popd
Docsy NPM install side-effect
Important
As of Docsy version 0.8.0, running npm install
inside the Docsy theme
directory will create a sibling folder named github.com
, for example:
$ ls themes
docsy github.com
This is a workaround necessary to support Docsy’s use as a single Hugo module (#1120).
Preview your site
To 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.
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