GoHugo, PaperMod and AWS Amplify
Hosting your GoHugo Site with AWS Amplify
Published Nov 10, 2024
AWS Amplify boasts a significant number of features, including the ability to create and support:
- Authentication through Cognito
- APIs using REST and GraphQL
- FaaS through the use of Lambda
- Storage through S3 Bucket
- Database Storage through DynamoDB
- Managed CI\CD pipeline for deployment
- and many more features
An AWS Account (See the References section for account registration guides) A supported git provider, which includes GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab and CodeCommit (note: CodeCommit is not available to new customers) GoHugo cli tool installed (See references section for details on how to install GoHugo for your operating systems)
Assuming you have GoHugo installed, let’s create a website called “sample-gohugo”. To do this, let’s run the command:
hugo new site sample-gohugoOnce the new site has been created, let’s add it to a git repository called
sample-gohugo. I’m deploying the PaperMod theme to a dedicated branch called papermod for testing.Next, we need to select the theme installation method. I’ve selected the Papermod theme which has several methods of installation, these include:
- Git Submodule Method
- Downloading and Unzipping
- Lastly, installation can be done via the Hugo module method
- Git Clone Method
Given that the submodule method is the recommended approach, I will go with this one. (For information on where I got this command, please see the reference section and the PaperMod wiki)
Next, we will configure the config.yml file with the theme we want by adding the line below
I’ve copied the sample configuration from the PaperMod wiki and tweaked it slightly for this article but feel free to tweak it to your liking.
Before we test out the server locally let's add a sample post page.
Now let’s update the sample-post.md with the following content.
Now we can test the server locally.
Let’s navigate the webpage and hey presto we have a local hosted version available.
But what if we want our adoring fans to the see it? Well, this is where amplify comes into the play. So let’s commit those changes to the code.
Now let’s proceed to deploying this with AWS Amplify.
Login into your AWS Console and navigate to AWS Amplify, we should be able to see some of our Amplify Applications. Here you can see where I have deployed my personal blog. Let’s select the
Create net app button.
In the next screen we can see a variety of applications that can be deployed to including frameworks such as:
- React
- Angular
- Vue
- Next.js
In addition, we can see the Version Control provider that can be stored, these include:
- GitHub (which we used in Step 1)
- Bitbucket
- CodeCommit (deprecated for new AWS customers)
- and GitLab
You can also deploy without Git, but seriously why are you not using Git. (If you are someone who deploys applications to Amplify without Git, I’d love to understand the motivation or benefits of this approach so please reach out to me if you have any insights on this)
Let’s select GitHub and then the
Next button.
In the next screen we need to configure our access to
sample-gohugo repo. Note: I’ve connected this account to GitHub before so you might see different screens to what I’m displaying here.
Once permissions are applied we can return to the App setting for our Amplify Application.
Add the repository
sample-gohugo and the papermod branch
In the screen below I need to update the
Build output directory to public.
Also, the version of
PaperMod I’m using required the latest version of Hugo. So I need to update my build settings to the following.If you select
Edit YML file then you should be able to update the yaml file with the following. Then click saveThen select
NextConduct one final last review then hit
Save and deploy
This will kick off the build process, once this is complete, we should be able to visit our website.
You should now have the bare bone structure for deploying a sample hugo site using AWS Amplify.
Please see the reference below for any of the details for themes, GoHugo installation, AWS account registration and the PaperMod theme wiki which was used for this blog.