Setting up Hugo with Ananke Theme as Module

The intention of this post is to walk through the steps I performed set up a static website with Hugo, add the Ananke theme as module, and deploy the website via AWS Amplify.

The reason for me to write this blog post is that I was hoping to find exactly this documentation somewhere online. But as I could not find it and worked my way through different blogs and videos, I thought, maybe other people might benefit from such a summary.

Originally, I just wanted to relaunch my blog. This blog right here. But then I ran into issues because of updates on the Hugo side. And then I ran into even more issues with Ananke. From what I gathered, the Ananke theme transitioned to a new maintainer. And with that, a couple of updates were implemented. And at this point, I want to say “Thank you”. Thank you to the poepl who created the theme. And Thank you to the people to help updating it.

Setup

Create a Hugo Site

I am working on a Mac and in VS Code.

First, make sure Hugo is installed:

$ hugo version

returning

hugo v0.145.0+extended+withdeploy darwin/arm64 BuildDate=2025-02-26T15:41:25Z VendorInfo=brew

Also, check the go version

$ go version

returning

go version go1.23.5 darwin/arm64

Pre-requisite: VS Code is already connected to GitHub account.

$ cd source_code

taking me to /Users/someusername/source_code

$ hugo new site davidbeck-online-relaunch-test

Returning:

Congratulations! Your new Hugo site was created in /Users/davibec/source_code/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test. Just a few more steps… Change the current directory to /Users/someusername/source_code/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test. Create or install a theme: Create a new theme with the command “hugo new theme ” Or, install a theme from https://themes.gohugo.io/ Edit hugo.toml, setting the “theme” property to the theme name. Create new content with the command “hugo new content /.”. Start the embedded web server with the command “hugo server —buildDrafts”. See documentation at https://gohugo.io/.

Then, in VS Code - open folder

Go to “Source Control”

• “Initialize Repository”

Add changes to Stage via PLUS.

Add Comment and Commit.

Next, “publish branch”. In my case, I select to create a public branch.

First commit is confirmed.

Resulting repository is: https://github.com/davidbeckonline/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test

Install the Ananke theme as module

Next step is to set up Hugo for the usage of modules.

In VS Code Terminal

$ cd davidbeck-online-relaunch-test

$ hugo mod init github.com/davidbeckonline/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test

Returning:

go: creating new go.mod: module github.com/davidbeckonline/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test hugo: to add module requirements and sums: hugo mod tidy

This step is creating a new go.mod file:

Next:

$ hugo mod tidy

(no output)

$ hugo mod get github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke/v2

Returning:

go: added github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke/v2 v2.12.0

Adjust hugo.toml

baseURL = 'https://www.davidbeck.online'
languageCode = 'en-us'
title = 'Blog Relaunch Test'

theme = ['github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke/v2']

Test via

$ hugo server

Returning:

Watching for changes in /Users/davibec/source_code/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test/{archetypes,assets,content,data,i18n,layouts,static} Watching for config changes in /Users/davibec/source_code/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test/hugo.toml, /Users/davibec/source_code/davidbeck-online-relaunch-test/go.mod Start building sites … hugo v0.145.0+extended+withdeploy darwin/arm64 BuildDate=2025-02-26T15:41:25Z VendorInfo=brew

| EN ——————-+—– Pages | 8 Paginator pages | 0 Non-page files | 0 Static files | 1 Processed images | 0 Aliases | 0 Cleaned | 0

Built in 29 ms Environment: “development” Serving pages from disk Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server —disableFastRender Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1) Press Ctrl+C to stop

Commit and push changes:

Resulting in:

Deploy on AWS Amplify

To complete the setup, I deploy the website via AWS amplify.

AWS.

Amplify.

“Create new App”.

Select GitHub.

Select your repository:

Click “Edit YAML”

Update YAML to

version: 1
env:
  variables:
    # Application versions
    DART_SASS_VERSION: 1.81.0
    GO_VERSION: 1.23.5
    HUGO_VERSION: 0.145.0
    # Time zone
    TZ: Europe/Amsterdam
    # Cache
    HUGO_CACHEDIR: ${PWD}/.hugo
    NPM_CONFIG_CACHE: ${PWD}/.npm
frontend:
  phases:
    preBuild:
      commands:
        # Install Dart Sass
        - curl -LJO https://github.com/sass/dart-sass/releases/download/${DART_SASS_VERSION}/dart-sass-${DART_SASS_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz
        - sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xf dart-sass-${DART_SASS_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz
        - rm dart-sass-${DART_SASS_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz
        - export PATH=/usr/local/bin/dart-sass:$PATH

        # Install Go
        - curl -LJO https://go.dev/dl/go${GO_VERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - sudo tar -C /usr/local -xf go${GO_VERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - rm go${GO_VERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH

        # Install Hugo
        - curl -LJO https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v${HUGO_VERSION}/hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xf hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - rm hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_linux-amd64.tar.gz
        - export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

        # Check installed versions
        - go version
        - hugo version
        - node -v
        - npm -v
        - sass --embedded --version

        # Install Node.JS dependencies
        - "[[ -f package-lock.json || -f npm-shrinkwrap.json ]] && npm ci --prefer-offline || true"

        # https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/9810
        - git config --add core.quotepath false
    build:
      commands:
        - hugo --gc --minify
  artifacts:
    baseDirectory: public
    files:
      - '**/*'
  cache:
    paths:
      - ${HUGO_CACHEDIR}/**/*
      - ${NPM_CONFIG_CACHE}/**/*

Save and deploy.

Wait a little bit more than a minute…

Et voila.