Nowadays, everyone has their own website on the Internet. I decided to start a blog based on Hugo technology.

This article was translated from Polish using Google Translate. The original post can be found on my blog at https://blog.budzynskimaciej.pl.

The beginnings of blogging

I started my adventure with a blog created with Wordpress. The configuration options, the number of templates and add-ons were all overwhelming. Wordpress was a very simple tool, but it also had a few flaws, it required PHP and a Database, and the loading time increased as the page grows. In addition, free hosting was not able to keep a lot of traffic on the sites.

Static page generators

Then I got acquainted with tools for generating static pages. I started by using the most popular of them Jekyll. And here the first problems arose. As a Windows user, I started having problems configuring and installing Ruby. Problems with certificates, problems with the bundler, with updating add-ons and Jekyll itself. Although Jekyll is a powerful tool that allows you to install add-ons and freely modify the appearance of the page, Ruby + Windows = Torment.

Hugo, a GoLang based static page generator

I decided to look for an alternative to Jekyll and this is how I came across Hugo, or actually goHugo (entering the phrase Hugo alone may be associated with finding a troll named Hugo known from an interactive television program for children). Hugo is just like Jekyll a static page generator, however written in the compiled GoLang language. We don't have to know anything about Go to be able to use Hugo. The only knowledge we need is the knowledge related to HTML and CSS if we want to edit or create our own templates and Markdown to write our posts.

The adventure with Hugo begins

To start your adventure with Hugo, download the latest version from the GitHub repository. From there, we download the latest version depending on the operating system you have: In my case, as of the day of writing the news, it is hugo_0.40.1_Windows-64bit.zip. For Windows, just unpack the hugo.exe file anywhere: I recommend C:/Hugo/ Then add the directory containing the above-mentioned file to the PATH environment variable. If we did everything correctly, the hugo help command should work. in case of problems, I refer you to the official Hugo documentation related to its installation on Windows in English.

Lastly, I leave a video related to quick installation and activation of our first blog in Hugo