blog-ahmza-com/content/posts/hugo-ssg/index.md

---
title: HUGO Static Site Generator
date: 2021-12-26
author: "ahmza"
draft: false
weight:

tags: ["web dev"]
description: "HUGO is a static site generator. No idea what that is ? Check out this post to learn more !"
---

## **Introduction**

_HUGO_ is a static site generator, which basically means it's a tool that
allows us to pre-compile all of our website into static HTML, CSS and
JS. The main benefit of using such methods to crate a static site is speed. A
Static site takes a lot less time to load than a site that uses
databases for example.

## **Disadvantages**

Some of the disadvantages (for me):

- A lot more infrastructure setup (for my setup)
- Editing and creating content can be a pain

**This is to no fault of _HUGO_ itself but the complexity of my infrastructure!!**
Deploying the site in my environment was a challenge as I had to get the site
files from gitlab and build a docker image that would compile the site as well
as create an image to be deployed in my [docker
swarm.](https://blog.ahmza.com/posts/building-a-docker-swarm-with-pis) I do feel
I made this more complicated than it needed to be, but now that I have it
working the workflow is great.

Because there is no integrated webui or CMS for _HUGO_, the experience
you get when creating content will vary person to person depending on
the environment you use to create the content. When using a CMS I took
dragging and dropping images for granted where now I have to explicitly
define full paths to images which can get me out of the flow of writing
content. Finding solutions for these challenges that makes this interesting.

## **Then Why?**

The main reason for switching to a static site generator is speed and
how lightweight the final product is, at the time of writing this the
total size of the content on this site including images is ~5mb which
is considerably smaller than a full CMS and database alone with no
content.

{{< video label="i love it" webm="/webm/i-love-it.webm" >}}

Some advantages of static sites in general:

- Security
- Reliability
- Scalability
- Low Resource Requirement

Although the pursuit of speed brought me to _HUGO_, here are a few other great
reasons:

- Git
- Markdown
- Simplicity
- Live Preview

I have recently started to use git a lot more and I'm able to implement a
content versioning system that can follow me everywhere.

Markdown is quick, gives me what I need and doesn't require me to right click.

_HUGO_ allows you to import pre-made themes or if your feeling up to it, make
your own.

Although at the start _HUGO_ seemed difficult to me I managed to learn and
appreciate the simplicity it brings to the table. My workflow is not perfect but
I feel _HUGO_ makes it easy to develop a smooth workflow.

Live Preview allows you to start up a light weight web server locally
and has an auto refresh feature so whenever a change is made the web
page refreshes so you can see changes without manually refreshing.

## **Conclusion**

You've had a quick intro to _HUGO_ and why I choose to use it, I wrote another
post on setting up a _HUGO_ site from start to finish.

[Setting Up a _HUGO_ Site](https://blog.ahmza.com/posts/setup-a-hugo-site)