Why Hugo

A Little Insight

I love to write. You could say it’s more than a need and less than a hobby.
And because all words deserve to be read, I started publishing with tools that promised everything (real-time previews, dozens of plugins, infinite configuration options).

At first, during the “getting used to it” phase, it felt exciting. But over time, I realized I spent most of my time fixing broken plugins, nervously updating dependencies, and digging through bloat… just to make a small change.

And doing all that for a personal site? Way too much.

To be fair, some of these tools are fantastic. They gave more than they took. But they never helped me just write.

See, I’m not someone who lets things be. I have to tinker, tweak, fix what bothers me. And that led me to different platforms, (dynamic, static, hybrid) all of which I tried. Oddly, Hugo wasn’t one of them. I’d heard of it, sure. Just never used it.

When Oxy Met Hugo

One day, I physically witnessed Hugo build a huge site, not dozens, but thousands of pages. And it built them fast.

Not “pretty quick”, but shockingly fast. The kind of fast that makes you think something must have gone wrong. But no, that’s Hugo!

That same night, I stayed up exploring Hugo. I didn’t know Go (still don’t), and had zero experience with Go templates.
But in fifteen minutes, I had a working website with just:

• One config file
• Five or six theme templates¹

And more importantly:

• No databases
• No CMS to babysit
• No JS frameworks
• No weird server setup

And because it was static, it could be deployed anywhere.

Yes, other tools offer some of these benefits. But the total package, simplicity, freedom, speed, I hadn’t found it anywhere else.

Hugo can’t do everything, nothing really can. But if your focus is text, Hugo is (at least for me) the GOAT.

Thank You for Nothing?

Did I just use ~300 words to repeat Hugo’s 7 word tagline?

“The world’s fastest framework for building websites.”
— gohugo.io

Yes. It seems like it.

Speed might not matter for small sites, a few hundred milliseconds here or there doesn’t change much. But when your content grows, Hugo’s speed becomes something you’ll genuinely be grateful for. And while its impressive speed initially caught my eye, and it’s often the first thing people mention about Hugo, what ultimately sold me wasn’t the speed.

It was the simplicity.

You don’t have to jump through hoops. Just install a theme and start writing.

Most personal sites don’t need more than Hugo’s out-of-the-box functionality.
But if you do need more? Hugo certainly won’t get in your way.

And The Cherry on Top

If you pair Hugo with the Alpha theme (yes, shameless plug), your site won’t just build fast, it’ll be even simpler to just start writing. But more on that on the next why.