Session brief — 16 June 2026

Scope: installing the toolchain, scaffolding the Hugo site, configuring it, adding the legal pages and post template, and pushing the source to GitHub under a separate identity. Covers Phases 1–5 of the build.

Hugo Extended

Hugo is a static site generator. Posts are written as plain Markdown files; Hugo converts them into a complete website (HTML and CSS) that any browser can serve.

Hugo ships in two editions, standard and extended. The extended edition processes SCSS/Sass stylesheets, which most themes — including PaperMod — require. The standard edition fails on those themes with an SCSS error. Extended was installed.

Reason for choosing Hugo over a hosted platform (WordPress, Squarespace): the output is just static files. No database, no always-on server, nothing to patch or that can go down. It is fast, free to host, and the entire site lives in Git, which makes it version-controlled and portable.

Git and GitHub

These are distinct things.

Git is software running locally that tracks changes to files over time. Each git commit records a snapshot of the project. Any snapshot can be returned to, and the difference between any two snapshots can be inspected. It functions as a complete change history for the project.

GitHub is a website that stores copies of Git repositories remotely. Git is the system; GitHub is one host for it (GitLab, Bitbucket, or a private server are alternatives — all use Git). GitHub was chosen because of GitHub Pages, its free static-site hosting, used in a later phase.

Actions taken: git init created a repository inside the project folder; the first commit recorded the initial state; that commit was pushed to a new GitHub repository under a separate account.

Site structure

hugo new site scaffolds a fixed folder layout. Function of each:

  • content/ — written content. Each .md file becomes a page. Created here: about.md, privacy.md, disclaimer.md, archives.md. Posts live in content/posts/.
  • themes/ — the visual design. PaperMod sits here. These files are not edited directly; the theme is controlled from the config file.
  • archetypes/ — templates for new content. hugo new posts/x.md uses the template here to pre-fill a new file.
  • static/ — files served as-is (images, favicon, the future llms.txt). Not processed by Hugo.
  • public/ — where Hugo writes the built site. Not edited directly; excluded from Git via .gitignore because the deployment pipeline regenerates it on each push.
  • hugo.yaml — the configuration file. Controls site title, theme, menu, social icons, and SEO settings. The homepage text, the menu, and the social icons are all defined here.

PaperMod theme

PaperMod is an open-source Hugo theme. It supplies the layout, typography, light/dark toggle, reading-time indicator, and breadcrumb navigation. Only content, identity, and configuration are user-supplied.

It was installed as a Git submodule — a reference inside the repository pointing to another repository, rather than a copy of its files. Consequence: theme updates can be pulled with one command, and the project repository stays small, holding a pointer rather than the theme’s full file tree.

Frontmatter

Every Hugo content file opens with a metadata block delimited by ---. This is the frontmatter — data about the file rather than its content.

---
title: "About"
layout: "single"
url: "/about/"
ShowReadingTime: false
---

Hugo reads it before rendering: title sets the page title, layout selects the presentation, url sets the page address. Page content follows the second ---. The post archetype pre-fills this block so new posts start with the correct structure.

Identity separation — two GitHub accounts

Git carries two independent identities:

  1. Commit identity — the name and email stamped on each commit, visible in public history.
  2. Authentication identity — the GitHub account used to connect and push.

git config user.name set without --global sets the commit identity for this project only, leaving the global (groggs) identity intact elsewhere. This was done deliberately to keep the blog’s commit history under the professional name.

Authentication is separate. VS Code’s terminal used the system’s stored credentials (groggs99) when pushing, producing a 403 Permission Denied: GitHub saw groggs99 pushing to a repository owned by niallgriffin90-ai and refused.

Fix: a Personal Access Token (a generated credential scoped to specific permissions) embedded in the remote URL — https://niallgriffin90-ai:TOKEN@github.com/... — which bypasses the system credential store entirely.

Repository name convention

The repository is named niallgriffin90-ai.github.io. GitHub treats a repository named exactly <username>.github.io as the account’s personal GitHub Pages site and serves it at that address. The name is functional, not cosmetic — it is what enables the free hosting.

State at end of session

  • Toolchain installed (Hugo Extended, Git present).
  • Site scaffolded, PaperMod added, config written.
  • Pages created: About, Privacy, Disclaimer, Archive.
  • Post archetype created (new posts default to draft: true).
  • Source pushed to niallgriffin90-ai/niallgriffin90-ai.github.io.
  • Commit identity confirmed as the professional account, not groggs.

Decisions made

  • Separate GitHub account (niallgriffin90-ai) for the blog, isolating it from the existing groggs crypto/Web3 identity.
  • Per-repo Git identity rather than global, so only this project carries the new name.
  • Notes and drafts kept outside the project folder (anything inside it is part of the public repo).

Glossary

  • Static site generator — software that builds a website from plain text files.
  • Commit — a recorded snapshot of the project in Git.
  • Submodule — a repository referenced inside another as a pointer, not a copy.
  • Frontmatter — the metadata block at the top of a content file.
  • Personal Access Token (PAT) — a generated GitHub credential with defined scopes.
  • GitHub Pages — GitHub’s free static-site hosting.