My opinion on Hugo

As you might know, this web is completly built with Hugo . In this blog post I’m going to tell you my opinion on Hugo, after I’ve built a pretty complex static website in it.

What even is Hugo?

Hugo is an open-source static site generator that enables fast and efficient website creation. It uses a template system based on Go and Markdown, which makes it easy to create content without the need for programming skills. Hugo allows generating websites directly from text files, which significantly speeds up page loading compared to traditional dynamic web applications. Thanks to the support of thousands of extensions and a wide range of available templates, it is easily adapted to both personal blogs and company pages, portfolios or documentation.

One of Hugo’s biggest strengths is it’s speed. Websites are statically generated, meaning that instead of dynamically generating pages on each load, HTML files are pre-built and displayed to users immediately. This approach not only improves performance, but also increases security as it eliminates many potential vulnerabilities associated with traditional CMS systems.

Should I use Hugo?

For people that have basic experience with programming (HTML, CSS) Hugo will be ideal. Thanks to Hugo’s many templates that other people created, it is easy and fast to create a simple blog or a portfolio. On the other hand, creating a original website with Hugo can be frustrating sometimes.

It is obviously another technology that you will need to learn. But is it really necesary? Do you know basics of HTML and CSS and you want to create simple portfolio? Don’t learn Hugo. First, create a website with only HTML and CSS and then with some static site generator for example Hugo. Then you will see the benefits of Hugo.

Hugo for complex websites

As you might know, this website is not really simple. Maybe it might look like it (as should) but under the hood there are many components used across the entire website. There are many subpages and many layouts used. Would I use Hugo if I had to rebuild this site again?

Yes. I’m all about website speed. I don’t want to send a lot of JavaScript to the client just to render a static web page. But for a job like this website, it will definitely be better to use something like React, if you don’t really care about the speed or accessibility of the website.

Cons of Hugo

Forget about NPM. In Hugo you will not use any NPM packages. Is it good that way? Well, thats the question. I personally use only TailwindCSS in my website. Also forget dynamics. It is a static site generator! If you want to have dynamics on your website, don’t use Hugo, you will regret it.