Personal Website 101

There is no need to explain the benefits of personal website or a porfolio site, still, I would note down some:

First learn the basics of Hugo and how it works by following Hugo Quickstart Guide
Once somewhat comfortable with Markdown and Hugo, choose a template/theme for your site
You can create your custom theme as well.
After choosing a theme, customize your site based on your need.
Verify your site locally at http://localhost:1313 (Assuming you did not change the config)
At this point, your stack is setup to build your site locally.
Finish multiple iterations of changes till you are satisfied with the website you want to build.

There are multiple options to host your static website. Eg: Github pages, BitBucket, Netlify, GitLab
In my case, I used GitHub Pages and deployed site at - hpj1992.github.io
I use this site as a pre-production/staging environment for my site.
Not including detailed information because there plenty of resources available online. Hugo instructions on hosting and deployment.

Once you figure out the hosting issues, it is time to purchase a domain for your website.
If you do not want specifc domain - which is perfectly valid - you can start sharing links from your hosted environment.
If you do decide to purchase a domain, there are multiple options in this case as well and the best option varies based on individual. Eg: GoDaddy, Bluehost etc
Some well known domain providers are listed here.
I selected a domain with name:
Domain registration for 1 year with auto-renewel. Paid $10/year.
Privacy protection for domain for 1 year. Paid $10/year.
Did not opt for HTTPS certificate because I do not need it currently.
Followed this youtube tutorial to link my GoDaddy domain to Github Pages.