Deploying Hugo in Docker

It has been approximately two years since I last configured my personal site and blog (and I have not been blogging). I have created multiple new CIVITATES services since then, so it made sense to merge the blogposts, actually document my progress and configuration of services, and show a list of Civitates services that are open to public.

Let’s start with this, a generic, Hugo site.

Why Docker?

It’s easy to back up the volumes (and I have tons of volumes across various services. I will post a screenshot sometime), it’s vastly easy to configure with just an .env file and/or a docker-compose.yaml (yaml > yml), and I prefer not leaving traces of services everywhere on either of my four systems/servers when I am updating them or destroying them.

For this, it was easy. The compose file is simply

version: '3.3'
services:
    server:
        command: server
        volumes:
            - '.:/src'
        ports:
            - 'YOUR_EXTERNAL_PORT:1313'
        image: klakegg/hugo:0.101.0

Save as docker-compose.yaml, run docker-compose up -d, and you run into an interesting error:

Error: Unable to locate config file or config directory. Perhaps you need to create a new site. Run hugo help new for details.

Well that’s easily solved. I installed hugo (ugh) and just ran hugo new site xyz where the docker-compose file is located.

Now, there is an issue with this. The entire purpose of docker is so that I don’t have to install hugo on my main system. To be entirely fair, you can just docker exec -it nameofcontainer /bin/sh to get the shell into the container, and install hugo that way. That too, would work.

Either is fine.

Get a theme, install it via whatever method you prefer (I am not going to go into it now, as after this this should be just regular Hugo installation/customization/posts), and you’re golden.

Anyhoo, next few days will be spent listing the Civitates services, cleaning up the codebase and what not.

Abe