10. March 2014
Migrate to Hugo from Jekyll
Move static content to static
Jekyll has a rule that any directory not starting with _ will be copied as-is to the _site output. Hugo keeps all static content under static. You should therefore move it all there.
With Jekyll, something that looked like
▾ <root>/
▾ images/
logo.png
should become
▾ <root>/
▾ static/
▾ images/
logo.png
Additionally, you’ll want any files that should reside at the root (such as CNAME) to be moved to static.
Create your Hugo configuration file
Hugo can read your configuration as JSON, YAML or TOML. Hugo supports parameters custom configuration too. Refer to the Hugo configuration documentation for details.
Set your configuration publish folder to _site
The default is for Jekyll to publish to _site and for Hugo to publish to public. If, like me, you have _site mapped to a git submodule on the gh-pages branch, you’ll want to do one of two alternatives:
- Change your submodule to point to map
gh-pagesto public instead of_site(recommended).
1 git submodule deinit _site
2 git rm _site
3 git submodule add -b gh-pages git@github.com:your-username/your-repo.git public
Or, change the Hugo configuration to use
_siteinstead ofpublic.{ .. "publishdir": "_site", .. }
Convert Jekyll templates to Hugo templates
That’s the bulk of the work right here. The documentation is your friend. You should refer to Jekyll’s template documentation if you need to refresh your memory on how you built your blog and Hugo’s template to learn Hugo’s way.
As a single reference data point, converting my templates for heyitsalex.net took me no more than a few hours.
Convert Jekyll plugins to Hugo shortcodes
Jekyll has plugins; Hugo has shortcodes. It’s fairly trivial to do a port.
Implementation
As an example, I was using a custom image_tag plugin to generate figures with caption when running Jekyll. As I read about shortcodes, I found Hugo had a nice built-in shortcode that does exactly the same thing.
Jekyll’s plugin:
1 module Jekyll
2 class ImageTag < Liquid::Tag
3 @url = nil
4 @caption = nil
5 @class = nil
6 @link = nil
7 // Patterns
8 IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS_AND_CAPTION =
9 IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS_AND_CAPTION_AND_LINK = /(\w+)(\s+)((https?:\/\/|\/)(\S+))(\s+)"(.*?)"(\s+)->((https?:\/\/|\/)(\S+))(\s*)/i
10 IMAGE_URL_WITH_CAPTION = /((https?:\/\/|\/)(\S+))(\s+)"(.*?)"/i
11 IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS = /(\w+)(\s+)((https?:\/\/|\/)(\S+))/i
12 IMAGE_URL = /((https?:\/\/|\/)(\S+))/i
13 def initialize(tag_name, markup, tokens)
14 super
15 if markup =~ IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS_AND_CAPTION_AND_LINK
16 @class = $1
17 @url = $3
18 @caption = $7
19 @link = $9
20 elsif markup =~ IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS_AND_CAPTION
21 @class = $1
22 @url = $3
23 @caption = $7
24 elsif markup =~ IMAGE_URL_WITH_CAPTION
25 @url = $1
26 @caption = $5
27 elsif markup =~ IMAGE_URL_WITH_CLASS
28 @class = $1
29 @url = $3
30 elsif markup =~ IMAGE_URL
31 @url = $1
32 end
33 end
34 def render(context)
35 if @class
36 source = "<figure class='#{@class}'>"
37 else
38 source = "<figure>"
39 end
40 if @link
41 source += "<a href=\"#{@link}\">"
42 end
43 source += "<img src=\"#{@url}\">"
44 if @link
45 source += "</a>"
46 end
47 source += "<figcaption>#{@caption}</figcaption>" if @caption
48 source += "</figure>"
49 source
50 end
51 end
52 end
53 Liquid::Template.register_tag('image', Jekyll::ImageTag)
is written as this Hugo shortcode:
1 <!-- image -->
2 <figure {{ with .Get "class" }}class="{{.}}"{{ end }}>
3 {{ with .Get "link"}}<a href="{{.}}">{{ end }}
4 <img src="{{ .Get "src" }}" {{ if or (.Get "alt") (.Get "caption") }}alt="{{ with .Get "alt"}}{{.}}{{else}}{{ .Get "caption" }}{{ end }}"{{ end }} />
5 {{ if .Get "link"}}</a>{{ end }}
6 {{ if or (or (.Get "title") (.Get "caption")) (.Get "attr")}}
7 <figcaption>{{ if isset .Params "title" }}
8 {{ .Get "title" }}{{ end }}
9 {{ if or (.Get "caption") (.Get "attr")}}<p>
10 {{ .Get "caption" }}
11 {{ with .Get "attrlink"}}<a href="{{.}}"> {{ end }}
12 {{ .Get "attr" }}
13 {{ if .Get "attrlink"}}</a> {{ end }}
14 </p> {{ end }}
15 </figcaption>
16 {{ end }}
17 </figure>
18 <!-- image -->
Usage
I simply changed:
{% image full http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4136/4829260124_57712e570a_o_d.jpg "One of my favorite touristy-type photos. I secretly waited for the good light while we were "having fun" and took this. Only regret: a stupid pole in the top-left corner of the frame I had to clumsily get rid of at post-processing." ->http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexnormand/4829260124/in/set-72157624547713078/ %}
to this (this example uses a slightly extended version named fig, different than the built-in figure):
{{% fig class="full" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4136/4829260124_57712e570a_o_d.jpg" title="One of my favorite touristy-type photos. I secretly waited for the good light while we were having fun and took this. Only regret: a stupid pole in the top-left corner of the frame I had to clumsily get rid of at post-processing." link="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexnormand/4829260124/in/set-72157624547713078/" %}}
As a bonus, the shortcode named parameters are, arguably, more readable.
Finishing touches
Fix content
Depending on the amount of customization that was done with each post with Jekyll, this step will require more or less effort. There are no hard and fast rules here except that hugo server --watch is your friend. Test your changes and fix errors as needed.
Clean up
You’ll want to remove the Jekyll configuration at this point. If you have anything else that isn’t used, delete it.
A practical example in a diff
Hey, it’s Alex was migrated in less than a father-with-kids day from Jekyll to Hugo. You can see all the changes (and screw-ups) by looking at this diff.