1 Start with a working site

Install the one required tool, run a local preview, and establish a visible baseline before changing the design.

A good tutorial begins with a result the reader can see. For OINK, that result is the official Starter served locally by Hugo Extended—before any logo, palette, language set, or content architecture is changed.

Define the outcome

At the end of this chapter you should have English, Chinese, and French home pages; working Docs, Blog, and Book routes; local search; and a color-mode control. That small baseline is enough to distinguish a content mistake from a theme or deployment problem later.

The OINK documentation site after its first successful local build — Figure 1-1 The first milestone is a site a reader can open, not a configuration file that merely looks plausible.

Install the prerequisite

The current Starter needs Git, Go 1.27 or newer, and Hugo Extended 0.165.0 or newer. OINK’s lower declared compatibility floor remains 0.160.1, but the Starter and its workflows deliberately pin the current tested toolchain. Node.js is not required.

$ go version
go version go1.27.0 darwin/arm64
$ hugo version
hugo v0.165.0+extended+withdeploy darwin/arm64

Run the preview

Create a repository with GitHub’s Use this template action when it will become a real project. To evaluate the original locally, clone it and start Hugo:

$ git clone https://github.com/pgsty/oink-starter.git my-docs
$ cd my-docs
$ hugo server

Open the address Hugo prints. Change one sentence in data/home/en.yaml and confirm that the browser shows it. A preview that responds to a content edit is more useful evidence than a terminal that only says the server started.

Record the baseline

Before customizing anything, record four facts: the Hugo version, the theme version in go.mod, the commit under review, and the routes you opened. Chapter 2 turns that running site into a content tree without losing this baseline.

For the complete layered workflow, see Use OINK Starter. For installation without the template, see From scratch.