User GuideEssentials
Getting Started
How to install the theme, run it, and find the files you will edit first. The guides in the docs/ folder go further.
Install and Run
You need Hugo 0.158 or later; the standard edition is enough. In the theme's exampleSite folder, run hugo server for a local preview that reloads as you edit (Hugo prints its address). hugo writes the finished static site to public/. The stylesheet comes compiled; Node.js 22 is needed only to rebuild it (npm run build:css).
Site Settings
hugo.toml is the file to edit first: the event’s name, year and venue under params.event, the contact details, the social links, the header navigation and footer columns under menus, and baseURL, your live domain, which the sitemap, canonical links and social cards are built from.
Event Days and Tickets
params.eventDays in hugo.toml lists the event’s dates. The schedule tabs, the ticket tabs and the speaker pages all read it, so moving the event is a change there. The theme sells nothing itself: params.ticketing.url is where every ticket button goes. It is the contact page until you set it to your ticketing provider’s event page; the currency and the small print sit beside it.
Forms
The newsletter, contact and sponsor forms post to the endpoints under params.forms in hugo.toml. They ship empty, so a form tells the visitor it could not be sent instead of pretending it was. Set each one to a service that accepts a form POST, such as Formspree, Basin, Netlify Forms or a function of your own.
Content
Speakers, blog posts and the legal pages are Markdown files in content/, and the blog categories are folders in content/categories/. Sessions, tickets, FAQs, partners, reviews and the gallery are JSON files in data/. A speaker, image or day a file names that does not exist stops the build and says which one.
Images
Every image is in assets/images and is named from the content, so a file put in your site’s own assets/images with the same name takes its place in the layout. The demo photos and videos are licensed to the original designer: replace them before you launch.
Colors and Fonts
The design’s colors and type sizes are custom properties set on body in tailwind/global.css, such as --color-style--primary for the orange, and repeated in each breakpoint block below it: change every copy, or override the token once on body in assets/css/custom.css in your site, which loads last. Urbanist ships in static/fonts/; its rules are in layouts/_partials/head/fonts.html.
Animation
Motion uses GSAP and Lenis. An element names its effect with a data-anim attribute, and the effects are defined in assets/js/motion.ts; smooth scrolling is set up in assets/js/smooth-scroll.ts. Everything that loops has a pause button. Visitors whose system asks for reduced motion get the content with no animation, and the loops start paused.
Before Publishing
Set baseURL, replace the demo images and the sample privacy policy and terms, connect the forms, then deploy the public/ folder to any static host. Delete the pages you do not need, this one included.
( Collect Your Ticket )