Background and Strategy

  • First of all I want my Digital Garden to shared the same philosophy with my Second Brain – using plain-text Mardown storing in Git
  • I choose Hugo over Astro.build or any other Static Site Generator (SSG)
    • it is simple and fast (convert thousands of pages in seconds)
    • I don’t need to install anything to use Hugo
      • but even if I need, it is only a single pre-compiled portable package only, no dependency nightmare
    • its “Page Bundles” works just like my “Resources” in my Second Brain
    • its “Taxanomies” and “Related Content” is like tagging and graph links in my Second Brain
    • using PaperMod theme since it prioritize simplicity, speed, and supports both light and dark theme
    • I can host it for free (utilizing free-tier plan) with Cloudflare/Netlify/Azure without complex configuration
      • the host can handle build and publish automatically after I perform a git commit
  • I have decided to host it on Cloudflare
    • Pages
      • build, deploy and host my Hugo-built site by connecting to Git
      • unlimited bandwidth
      • allowed custom domain up to 100
      • limitation
        • 500 builds per month
        • total number of files cannot exceed 20,000
        • each file size cannot exceed 25 MB
    • Pages Functions
      • executing code on the Cloudflare network with Cloudflare Workers
      • can handle authenticating, form submissions, or working with middleware
    • D1 / Workers KV
      • I haven’t decide on this yet
      • D1 is a SQLite database, while Workers KV is a key/value data storage that allows you to store and retrieve data globally

Checklist

Phase 1 - The Infrastructure (The Plot)

  • Iitialize Git: Create a private GitHub repo
  • Map PARA: set up your 4 main folders (1_Projects, 2_Areas, 3_Resources, 4_Archives)
  • install Hugo: install Hugo locally on your machine at C:\Users\___\AppData\Local\Programs\hugo_0.160.1 and append it to your ENVIRONMENT PATH
  • Nest the Garden: Create your Hugo site hugo new site PLOT --format yaml
  • Add PaperMod: Download PaperMod theme hugo-PaperMod-8.0.zip and extract into PLOT/themes/PaperMod, add: theme: PaperMod in hugo.yml
  • Create .gitignore: Ensure public/ and resources/ are ignored at the repo root
    • .gitignore 
      # 1. Main Build Artifacts (Never commit)
/public/
/resources/
/.hugo_build.lock

# 2. Local Assets Caches (Optional but highly recommended)
/resources/

# 3. Environment & Dynamic Config Tracking 
/assets/jsconfig.json
/hugo_stats.json
*.log

# OS-specific files (Windows & macOS)
desktop.ini
Thumbs.db
.DS_Store

Phase 2 - Configuration (The Soil)

  • Configure hugo.yaml: Set your name, base URL, title, and theme to PaperMod
    • hugo.yaml 
      baseURL: http://thethinker.pages.dev/
locale: en-us
title: The Thinker
theme: PaperMod

params:
  # Author name
  Author: The Thinker
  • Uses Page Bundles: Ensure posts are organized in a folder with index.md, e.g. /posts/my-first-post/index.md
  • Setup Taxonomies: Define tags as your primary way to organize topics
    • hugo.yaml 
      # enable taxanomies and define tags as the primary way to organize topics
taxonomies:
  tag: tags

# add Tags to Navigation
menu:
  main:
    - name: Tags
      url: /tags/
      weight: 10
    • content/tags/_index.md 
      ---
title: "Tags"
description: "Explore my posts by tags"
layout: "terms"
---
  • Define Related Content: Add the “scoring” weights to your config to automate relationships
    • hugo.yaml 
      # add the "scoring" weights to automate relationships
# Exact Match: If two posts share the same keyword, they get 100 points.
# Multiple Matches: If they share two tags, they get 80 + 80 = 160 points.
# Threshold: If the total score is below your threshold, the post won't be suggested.
related:
  threshold: 80         # Only show posts with a score higher than this
  includeNewer: true    # Show posts newer than the current one
  toLower: true         # Case-insensitive matching
  indices:
    - name: keywords
      weight: 100     # Matches in "keywords" are top priority
    - name: tags
      weight: 80      # Matches in "tags" are very important
    - name: categories
      weight: 50
    - name: date
      weight: 10      # Boosts posts published around the same time
    • layouts/partials/related.html 
      {{ $related := .Site.RegularPages.Related . | first 3 }}
{{ with $related }}
<h3>See also</h3>
<ul>
  {{ range . }}
  <li><a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">{{ .Title }}</a></li>
  {{ end }}
</ul>
{{ end }}
    • copy themes/PaperMod/layouts/_default/single.html to PLOT/layouts/_default/single.html, and add the following new footer 
      {{ partial "related.html" . }}
  • Enable Search: Configure the PaperMod search index so your garden is navigable
    • content/search/index.md 
      ---
title: "Search"
description: "Explore my posts by searching them"
layout: "search" # This tells PaperMod to use its search template
summary: "search"
placeholder: "Search for posts..."
---
    • hugo.yaml 
      # enable Search
outputs:
  home:
    - HTML
    - RSS
    - JSON # This is the critical part for search

# Add Search to Navigation
menu:
  main:
    - name: Search
      url: /search/
      weight: 10

# Search related configuration
params:
  fuseOpts:
    isCaseSensitive: false
    shouldSort: true
    location: 0 # the starting point
    distance: 1000 # how far away from the Location a match can be
    threshold: 0.4 # The "fuzziness" or strictness of the match. Scale: 0.0 (perfect match only) to 1.0 (match anything)
    minMatchCharLength: 0
    keys: ["title", "permalink", "summary", "content"]
  • Enable ShowBreadCrumbs and disable ShowLastMod in the config
    • hugo.yml 
      
params:
  # Enable Breadcrumbs above post titles
  ShowBreadCrumbs: true
  # Disable "Last Modified" date on posts
  ShowLastMod: false
  • Configure the Homepage
    • hugo.yaml 
        # Using Home-Info Mode: use 1st entry as some Information
  homeInfoParams:
    Title: Title here bla
    Content: Content here bla bla bla.
  • Create an About page
    • hugo.yaml 
      menu:
  main:
    - name: About
      url: /about/
      weight: 10
    • content/about/index.md 
      ---
title: "About"
ShowBreadCrumbs: false
ShowLastMod: false
ShowReadingTime: false
ShowWordCount: false
ShowTOC: false
---
your About content...
  • Enable Table of Contents
    • hugo.yaml 
      params:
  ShowTOC: true
  TocOpen: true
  • Always let Hugo render links by itself; by doing this the markdown links work across editor and live site; refer to https://gohugo.io/configuration/markup/#renderhookslinkuseembedded
    • hugo.yaml 
      markup:
  goldmark:
    renderHooks:
      link:
        useEmbedded: always

Phase 3 - The Harvest Workflow (The Irrigation)

  • Identify a Seedling: Pick a folder from PARA that is “ready enough” to share
  • Move to Garden: Drag the folder into PLOT/content/posts/
  • Standardize Name: Rename the main file to index.md
  • Clean Attachments: Ensure images used are inside the same folder
  • Frontmatter Ritual: Add title, date, tags: [“seedling”], and draft: false
  • Local Review: Run hugo server -D and check your work at localhost:1313

Phase 4 - The Publishing Pipeline (The Planting)

  • Cloudflare Setup: Log in to the Cloudflare Dashboard, navigate to Workers & Pages, click Create application > Pages, and link your private GitHub repo
  • Configure Build Settings: Select the Hugo framework preset, set the build command to hugo, and ensure the build output directory is set to public, also set the Root directory explicitly to PLOT
  • Configure Environment Variables: Add HUGO_VERSION (0.160.1) and GO_VERSION (1.22.0 or higher) in the Environment variables (advanced) section
  • Apply Path Filtering: configure Cloudflare’s Build watch paths > Include paths: to PLOT/* and it will only trigger builds when changes occur inside the PLOT directory

Phase 5 - Trending the Garden (Growth)

  • The Commit: Use Git to commit and push your changes to your repository
  • Verify Build: Check the Workers & Pages tab in your Cloudflare Dashboard to confirm that your build successfully passed and wasn’t skipped by your folder filter rule
  • Monitor Cloudflare: Visit your *.pages.dev production URL to see your published notes in the wild
  • Cross-Link: Ensure links from your private PARA notes to your public PLOT notes to build your local graph works

See also