Why I switched from WordPress to Hugo
I had been using WordPress for more than 10 years to write articles, but lately I update it less often, and even so I have to update WordPress itself and its plugins frequently, which is also a nuisance from a security point of view. On top of that, the articles on this site do not really need to be a blog; they are closer to static pages.
If that is the case, then making the site with a static generator would make the site itself faster as well, so I took the plunge and went for a static site.
Now, there seem to be all sorts of programs for static generators, but I used a tool called Hugo, which is written in the Go language.
The advantages and disadvantages of switching from WordPress to Hugo
Advantages
- No MySQL or PostgreSQL database and no PHP are needed
- The built site stays in HTML format, so it is fast
- There is almost nothing to worry about on the security side
- Because it is managed on Gitlab or Github, it is always in a backed up state, so there is no need to take backups
- By using Netlify there is no need to stand up a server yourself, and updating through Git builds the site automatically
- On top of that, with Netlify you can use letsencrypt for free and it renews automatically, so you never have to create a certificate yourself or worry about it expiring
- If you are used to the Markdown format, writing articles is easy
Disadvantages
- Writing articles on the web or on a smartphone is practically impossible
- There is no functionality you can customise easily the way you can with WordPress plugins
- Compared with the overwhelming number of WordPress themes, Hugo still has relatively few
- You have to learn Markdown
- Knowledge of Hugo’s structure and of the Go language is required as well
- Tags for SEO, ads and the like also have to be customised on your own
- When you build the site on Netlify, the free tier does not let you do things like access restriction
- When Hugo is upgraded you have to fix the affected parts yourself
After switching to Hugo
I listed the advantages and disadvantages above, but for those who want to leave everything to someone else without thinking and just use the features and the themes, WordPress is the better choice.
People who care about making the site as fast as possible, or who want to fiddle with all sorts of things themselves, are the ones who choose a static generator such as Hugo.
If you already have accounts on Netlify and Gitlab (Github) and Hugo is installed, being able to build a site in about 10 minutes is really convenient.
By the way, for this site I write the articles on a Mac or Linux, push them to Gitlab, and Netlify builds them automatically.
For the custom domain, I point it at Netlify on the DNS server I manage, so my own domain is operated on Netlify
I would like to post about migrating the articles from WordPress to Hugo later on