This post documents the process of building the official website for OPFORGE, a cybersecurity lab project focused on detection engineering, threat emulation, and explainable AI.

🔧 Tooling Stack

  • Hugo – Static site generator (v0.147.1)
  • PaperMod – Lightweight, responsive Hugo theme
  • GitHub Pages – CI/CD-backed static hosting
  • Cloudflare DNS – Domain and HTTPS management
  • Custom Domain – https://opforge.dev

🧱 Build Process

  1. Created site:
   hugo new site opforge-site --format yaml
  1. Installed theme:
git submodule add https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod.git themes/PaperMod

  1. Configured hugo.yaml with menus, theme, and metadata

  2. Created first post and tested site locally:

hugo server
  1. Set up GitHub Actions for CI/CD:
  • peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2 for building
  • peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3 for deployment
  1. Set baseURL for GitHub Pages:
baseURL: "https://ATHL337.github.io/opforge-site/"

  1. Set GitHub Pages source branch to gh-pages in repository settings

  2. Updated DNS via Cloudflare:

  • A records for root domain pointing to GitHub Pages IPs
  • CNAME for www pointing to ATHL337.github.io
  • HTTPS enforced

🌐 Outcome

With minimal effort and a clean Hugo theme, the OPFORGE site is:

  • Easy to write and publish to
  • Fully version-controlled
  • Built for scaling into documentation, blog posts, and operator guides

🧠 Lessons Learned

  • Always configure baseURL properly for Hugo builds
  • Don’t push the public/ directory—let CI/CD handle it
  • GitHub Actions + Hugo + Cloudflare = elegant, scalable, and secure

More blog posts coming soon on the build-out of the lab, including SOF-ELK setup, Winlogbeat JSON export, and ingestion pipelines.