Completed this web site using HUGO
- 2 minutes read - 374 wordsSo now I have completed to implement this web site using HUGO. This is a quick summary of my experience using HUGO so far.
Lessons learned
- It’s hard to find a theme which fits.
- I have chosen the Ananke theme, because it has nice section pages, see the projects overview for example
- It takes time to understand the templates
- I had to adjust the theme and the layout templates a lot
- To get a consistent style, I removed/added/rewrote CSS style classes in almost every template to get consistent styling for links, buttons, backgrounds, fonts etc.
- Other (style) changes were required to improve the look on a smartphone. Next time I’d do this in parallel, instead of just looking at what a desktop browser is rendering.
- Menus and i18n were not too easy (i18n)
- There was no need to ask a question, every problem I had was already documented somewhere.
Conclusion
It takes time to get to know HUGO.
It took around five days to implement this site. Most content (projects) was already there, but when I imported the content, a cleanup was required.
But this really pays of in the long run: When the initial setup has been completed (menus, style, i18n etc.), all you need is to maintain Markdown documents. And it’s comfortable to manage the content using a version control system like git.
I like the tagging functionality, this is an easy way to cross-reference content.
Another nice feature is the automatic reloading after a Markdown file was saved. Just hit the save button, and watch the browser reloading the document.
Further it’s easy to have separate environments:
- Development: Test new features, plugins etc.
- Content management: Edit content
- Test: Provide a static/stable copy
- Production
No need for critical tasks on the production system directly. Simple and easy rollback to old versions included.
I have setup a web site using WordPress recently, and personally I would prefer a static site generator like HUGO (no patches required). Having all content in text files is a big plus.
Of course this is from a developer’s perspective, so this will not apply to everyone. Yet I think - when a system has been setup - even non-technical people might appreciate the simplicity of Markdown as well.