You can read the whole hugodown docs and probably should especially as hugodown evolves.
Also read the docs of the theme you choose.
You might not need to read Hugo docs, that are much longer, much more overwhelming: you mostly only need to read Hugo docs when you need to tweak or customize a theme.
If you start using Hugo & hugodown for your website…
Watch development on GitHub of hugodown, of the theme?
Subscribe to the hugodown issues that are interesting to you?
Also keep an eye on what’s happening for blogdown!
Personal website: take notes to not forget what you tweaked, etc.
Collaborative website: even Hugo users might not know your website structure!
RStudio community forum (RMarkdown category)
If you start tweaking Hugo templates, Hugo forum
If you use #blogdown or #Hugo currently (or are shopping around), I'm on the lookout for user-friendly themes with nice built-in layouts for making personal websites. Any favorites themes recently? Please share! 🦪 pic.twitter.com/pkAQGKgRAC
— Alison Presmanes Hill (@apreshill) November 19, 2020
Browse the gallery. Choose your theme wisely. Use Hugo docs to create new site. Follow hugodown configuration docs.
blogdown is an alternative to hugodown. It might be better for your needs if you need something more complex than what hugodown provides: e.g. there are two special scripts build.R and build2.R for running arbitrary code before and after building your website.
The comparison hugodown vs blogdown is outdated as of blogdown new version.
The blogdown book will soon be updated. In the meantime read the package docs + its source code including its changelog.
Follow RStudio blog.
To give a less technical interface to a Hugo website, you could use a CMS, see for instance what Steph Locke set up in this website with Netlify CMS.
How I started: I needed to tweak one thing in an existing theme and I googled that thing; then I had to tweak one more thing; etc. Others might have built a theme from scratch.
Threads indicating resources for beginners and the lack thereof: 2018, 2019
What you must know according to Steph Locke
You don't need to know go to build Hugo themes imo.
— Steph Locke (@TheStephLocke) June 24, 2020
Intermediate "Hugo" knowledge is needed, & is:
- filesystem inheritance
- iteration (range, where)
- scoping (with, site, params, . )
- scalars, slices (aka vectors) , and maps (aka lists)
- control logic (if, comparisons)
The advanced level for themes is probably:
— Steph Locke (@TheStephLocke) June 24, 2020
- asset pipelines inc. Npm packages like postcss
- output formats (md, json etc) and extra layouts
- html & css advanced stuff
- data driven components ( data/ and get*() s)