Overview

In this first lab, I set up a public course blog that will host all lecture and lab homeworks for this course.
My goals were:

  • Create a clean, readable blog structure for future posts
  • Make local preview easy for fast iteration
  • Deploy the site online using GitHub Pages so it is always accessible

Tooling Choice

I used Hugo + GitHub Pages for hosting.

Reasons:

  • Hugo is lightweight and fast to build locally
  • Markdown writing is convenient for documenting labs
  • GitHub Pages + GitHub Actions provides automatic deployment on every push

Setup Steps

1) Create the Hugo project

I created a new Hugo site and initialized a git repository:

  • hugo new site igd301-blog
  • git init

Then I added a theme (PaperMod) as a git submodule:

  • git submodule add https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod themes/PaperMod

2) Configure the site

I created/updated hugo.toml with a minimal configuration:

  • Site title
  • Theme name
  • Menu entry for posts
  • baseURL pointing to my GitHub Pages address

3) Write the first post

I created the first blog post:

  • hugo new posts/lab1-setup-blog.md

Then I wrote this post to document what I did and any issues.

4) Local preview

To preview the blog locally:

  • hugo server -D

This starts a local server (default: http://localhost:1313/) and hot-reloads changes, which is very convenient when writing posts.

Deployment (GitHub Pages)

1) Create a GitHub repository

I created a public repository on GitHub:

  • Repo name: igd301-blog (project page)
  • Default branch: main

Then I pushed the local project to GitHub.

2) Deploy with GitHub Actions

In the repository settings, I enabled Pages and selected GitHub Actions as the deployment source.

I added a workflow file at:

  • .github/workflows/hugo.yml

This workflow:

  1. Checks out the repository (including submodules for the theme)
  2. Installs Hugo (extended version)
  3. Builds the site into the public/ folder
  4. Uploads the build artifact and deploys it to GitHub Pages

After the workflow finished successfully, GitHub generated a public Pages URL.

Result

Issues & Notes

  • Base URL matters: If baseURL is not set correctly, the theme CSS may not load and links can be wrong.
    I fixed this by setting:

    baseURL = "https://xyn-1127.github.io/igd301-blog/"

  • Theme submodule: Using a theme as a git submodule keeps the theme version controlled and reproducible, but it also means the workflow needs submodules: recursive in the checkout step.