Installing Hexo on Ubuntu

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Mascote do LinuxPro despejando uma pilha de arquivos de texto no funil do Hexo, que os transforma no site pronto exibido no notebook

Note (2026): The original howto installed Node with nvm v0.35.1 on Ubuntu 16.04/18.04. Hexo 8.x requires Node ≥ 20.19. Below: nvm 0.40.7, current LTS, hexo-cli without sudo, and the official workflow (init, server, generate). This site ran Hexo for years and migrated to WordPress in 2026 — the generator remains useful for static blogs.

Hexo is a static site generator in Node.js: Markdown goes in, HTML comes out, no database. GitHub Pages, Netlify, an nginx pointing to public/. In September 2026 the npm package hexo is at 8.1.2. The official CLI remains npm install -g hexo-cli — but without root.

Content hide
1 Node via nvm (do not use sudo npm)
2 First blog
3 Publish
4 Wrap-up

Node via nvm (do not use sudo npm)

Hexo 8.0+ requires Node 20.19 or newer. Ubuntu apt lags behind. nvm 0.40.7 (18 August 2026) installs the LTS in your home directory:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential git curl
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.7/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc
nvm install --lts
nvm use --lts
node -v
npm -v

If you see EACCES with global npm, the prefix is wrong — do not fix it with sudo. nvm already points npm to ~/.nvm. Alternative: fnm.

npm install -g hexo-cli
hexo version

First blog

hexo init clones the starter (Landscape theme) and installs dependencies with npm, yarn or pnpm — whichever is in PATH:

hexo init ~/src/blog
cd ~/src/blog
hexo new "Olá, Hexo"
hexo server

Open http://localhost:4000. The draft is in source/_posts/, Markdown + front-matter. Generate static files:

hexo generate
# ou: hexo g
ls public/

The public/ is what nginx or Pages serves. Do not commit this folder — the .gitignore in the starter already ignores it.

Publish

GitHub Pages, in 2026, uses an Action, not just hexo-deployer-git in gh-pages. The official docs: hexo.io/docs/github-pages. Deployment via rsync/git still exists:

npm install hexo-deployer-git --save
# _config.yml → deploy: type: git / repo: / branch:
hexo clean && hexo deploy

An nginx on the VPS: root /caminho/do/blog/public; and hexo generate in cron or CI. No PHP, no MariaDB.

Wrap-up

Node LTS, hexo-cli under your user, hexo init, hexo s, hexo g. Not the nvm 0.35 and Ubuntu 16.04 from the original post. Docs: hexo.io/docs · github.com/hexojs/hexo.