Use npm with Hugo

I was developing a new Hugo theme and wanted to use Tailwind, and if you did not know, Tailwind is installed in a project using Nodejs. More specifically, npm however I did not know how do I use Hugo with npm and deploy it to Cloudflare. kinda dumb.

Turns out, its quite easy.

Steps

Initialise npm to your project, or in this case, install Tailwind.

• from your Hugo project root, Install Tailwind:
• set your Tailwind config

Now you will have to set scripts so you can run Hugo using node. It sounds complicated but its not.

• install npm-run-all by running:

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npm i -D npm-run-all

• Set scripts in package.json:

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{
  "scripts": {
    "dev-hugo": "hugo server --disableFastRender",
    "dev-tailwind": "npx tailwindcss -i assets/css/raw.main.css -o static/css/main.css --watch",
    "dev": "run-p dev-hugo dev-tailwind",
    "build": "npx tailwindcss -i assets/css/raw.main.css -o static/css/main.css && hugo "
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "npm-run-all": "^4.1.5",
    "tailwindcss": "^3.3.3"
  }
}

So what I did here is that I made a script called dev-hugo which runs hugo server then I made another script called dev-tailwind which runs Tailwind then I combine both “dev-” scripts so both can run simultanously; which is also why we need the npm-run-all package.

The combined script is called dev however you can change the name of script to whatever you want. Also, I made another script to actually build my Hugo site along with the Tailwind CSS.

In summary, I have two main scripts which I will be using: dev & build. Now to run Hugo locally, run: npm run dev & to build the website i.e., on Cloudflare, run: npm run build and it should all work.

I still don’t understand some part of this but hey, it works. Here is the project which uses npm + Hugo + Tailwind + Cloudflare: https://github.com/mansoorbarri/Davlux

-MB