# New Hugo site, custom theme

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459>\
**Category:** Announcements\
**Created:** [April 9, 2018, 2:54pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459 "2018-04-09T14:54:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cmod](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/cmod/32/5190_2.png) [@cmod](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/cmod)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:54pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/1 "2018-04-09T14:54:00Z")

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Hey all —

Just converted my 10+ year old Expression Engine install to Hugo:

> **[Craig Mod — Collected writing: books and essays on photography, publishing,...](https://craigmod.com)**
>
> Essays and books on walking, photography, and books themselves. Also, the On Margins podcast and the Roden and Ridgeline newsletters.

Rebuilt and refactored (a bit) using my own theme. The site actually uses three separate sub-hugo sites:

[https://craigmod.com/](https://craigmod.com/) — for the homepage/essays  
[https://craigmod.com/onmargins](https://craigmod.com/onmargins) — for the podcast  
[https://craigmod.com/roden](https://craigmod.com/roden) — for the mailing list archive

The directory format is:

/  
– /public\_html  
– /main  
– /roden  
– /margins

Where _main_, _roden_, and _margins_ are all their own hugo sites. They build into …/public\_html and I have simple scripts to _git sync_ and _rm -rf public\_html_ and rebuild all three.

I sort of walked myself into this setup in that last year I used /roden and /margins to test hugo out as /main was still Expression Engine. Finding Hugo to be pretty great, and understanding how it worked, I then set about converting ten years of essays and content into markdown, rebuilding the templates / theme, and clearing out a bunch of cruft that had built up over the years.

So now it’s all on Hugo, and I actually like the compartmentalization of sections into their own sites — makes testing easy, keeps directories clean, and makes updating just a small section simple as well.

A big thanks to all of you who have worked on Hugo, and especially @bep for building and continuing to work so diligently on this great platform.

C

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**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 3:08pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/2 "2018-04-09T15:08:21Z")

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> [@cmod](#):
>
> I sort of walked myself into this setup in that last year I used /roden and /margins to test hugo out as /main was still Expression Engine. F

What made you move? I assume the old platform also kind of did its job, and a move would be some work … Security? Performance?

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**Author:** ![budparr](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/budparr/32/749_2.png) [@budparr](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/budparr)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/3 "2018-04-09T16:56:32Z")

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Hey, @cmod - You and I met a few years ago at a party at New Directions (their site is Hugo, too: [https://www.ndbooks.com](https://www.ndbooks.com)). I think we’re both friends of Richard Nash.

At any rate, welcome to the Hugo community and thanks for sharing your site.

_for those who don’t know him, @cmod has done a ton of really interesting projects, specifically in the publishing world._

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**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/4 "2018-04-09T22:32:57Z")

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Anyhow, it’s a great site. You have good taste in fonts. The FF Meta Serif is my favourite font for body text. I knew I had seen it before.

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**Author:** ![cmod](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/cmod/32/5190_2.png) [@cmod](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/cmod)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 3:21am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/5 "2018-04-10T03:21:26Z")

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> [@bep](#):
>
> What made you move? I assume the old platform also kind of did its job, and a move would be some work … Security? Performance?

Mainly I wanted to disconnect from any technical debt moving forward. I wanted my site to work no matter what — as long as Apache was alive, the site would be alive. PHP updates over the years had rendered bits and bobs of the EE site broken. It was too much technical debt for too little benefit.

Also, getting out of MYSQL was a bonus. There’s something nice about a bunch of frontmattered markdown.

And then performance. Although I’m running my site through cloudflare so it’s not that big of a deal, it’s nice to know it can’t get much simpler than it is with Hugo.

So while the old platform was doing its job, it felt increasingly like a duct taped Rube Goldberg machine, that could fail at any given moment. (Also, the EE install I was using was also 10 years old, not updated, and full of security holes I’m sure.)

Hugo’s active development (plus simplicity and speed) was the main selling point for choosing it.

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**Author:** ![cmod](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/cmod/32/5190_2.png) [@cmod](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/cmod)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 3:22am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-hugo-site-custom-theme/11459/6 "2018-04-10T03:22:28Z")

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> [@budparr](#):
>
> Hey, @cmod - You and I met a few years ago at a party at New Directions (their site is Hugo, too: [https://www.ndbooks.com](https://www.ndbooks.com) ). I think we’re both friends of Richard Nash.

Oh, fantastic! Yes, Richard is my publishing spirit guide.

Thanks for the welcome.