This is probably the hundredth rendition of this site xD Previously to using HUGO my blog was built using GHOST CMS which is a great platform and is feature rich. However my problem came with the base design philosophy of a CMS, relying on a Database.

HUGO is a static site generator meaning it takes a readable file format like markdown and then compiles all that down into HTML (Static Files) This removes the need for a database and in turn improves performance of the site ten fold.

Pros of static sites

Security
Reliability
Speed
Scalability
Low Resource requirement

Cons of a static site

Less user friendly

Why

The reasons above all fit within my goal of trying to containerise services running in my home lab.

The plan is to move the services I use to a cluster of Raspberry Pis. As long as the services have an ARM image or I can build an ARM image then this is a viable solution

How

The deployment method of this site relies on the Gitlab CI/CD pipeline.

Clone the repository
Push changes to Gitlab
Gitlab runners create the docker image
Image is pushed to my private docker repository
Pi cluster uses that image to host the site locally

When Pulling / Cloning

Be sure to add --recurse-submodules as the theme used is a submodule

git clone --recurse-submodules git@gitlab.com:AHMZA/blog.git

Update the theme

As the theme is a submodule it will need to be update with the following

git submodule update --remote --merge