Hugo & Git Commands Cheat Sheet

Sometimes we forget the simple things. Here’s a living list of commands I use while working on my Hugo blog with a custom theme and GitHub workflow.

🧱 After Cloning the Repo

Background: I keep switching local locations for my github repos. From one laptop to another. WSL to Linux. This command is very useful.

Initialize Git submodules (for theme): Cloning the repo does not automatically fetch submodule content — including your theme.

git submodule update --init --recursive

🧪 Local Development Server

Background: The baseURL specified in the main config file is a real issue if your website is already in production.

Start the Hugo development server Includes draft content and sets localhost as the base URL for correct local links.

hugo server -D --baseURL=http://localhost:1313/

More coming soon.

Feel free to copy, fork, or steal this list — I made it for myself 😎