By now (at the final part of this little trilogy) I hope you have a clear sense of what my goals with Alpha are:
- A clean, inclusive UI/UX focused on text.
- To be novice-friendly.
The second goal, let me tell you, is easier said than done. To achieve it, I needed to write simple, instructive, and non-technical documentation. But given the nature of the project, it’s also essential to cover technical topics, without making things tedious for those with some or even advanced experience.
My solution? A tested one! A separate tutorial for Hugo and web novices that gently introduces more technical concepts and eventually points them to the main documentation, which is intended for users with some familiarity.
For the Novices
By “novices”, I mean individuals who are comfortable using a PC, but may have never opened a terminal. People whose web experience is mostly as visitors and terms like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or Hugo might not mean much to them and that’s totally fine.
Alpha is designed to help you write, not to turn you into a developer.
If this sounds like you, start with From Zero with Zero. And if something’s unclear, feel free to drop me a line.
For the Intermediate Users
Intermediate users are those who’ve used Hugo before, probably they already have a site and want or need a new theme. But they don’t necessarily tinker with theme files or write complex Hugo templates.
For this group, the Alpha documentation will be the main resource for how-to’s. Ironically, this might be the group that faces the most friction.
Why? They might already rely on certain Hugo features that Alpha doesn’t support out-of-the-box (like {{ .ReadingTime }}) or they’re using an older Hugo version that isn’t compatible.
Some of these issues can be resolved by checking the Alpha docs and the official Hugo documentation. Just keep in mind:
Alpha’s documentation is a work in progress. It doesn’t cover every conceivable Hugo feature, but rather what I’ve personally tested and confirmed works smoothly.
For the Pros
Pros or advanced users are essentially developers who use Hugo for their projects.
If you’re in this group… send me your info.
I’ll need your help with Alpha, not the other way around.
A Few Closing Thoughts
Whether you’re a dev, a writer, both, or something entirely different, my ambition with Alpha was to create something that feels like home for your content, not an obstacle
Whether you’re here to write or tweak the theme into your own thing, Alpha should ideally stay out of your way and let you lead, undisturbed.
So, that’s the How-to Alpha from my perspective.
Read. Write. Publish!
The rest is up to you.