Why I Use Hugo

This blog is generated by Hugo hosted in github as a github page. This post answers the questions:

• why i do it this way?
• how?

I have been blogging since 2000’s. My primary platform was google’s blogger. It was a good platform. Yet it is geared towards blogging with a desktop computer. the 2000’s saw the rise of smart phones or iPhones. I am an iPhone user since 3GS. I did have a period of time that carrying two smart phones with me. One iOS and one Android most of the time.

Blogging and writing with the smartphone was one of the great hype of the use cases. It has been pushed to the peak with the now defunct Scriptogram. I have been experimenting and testing various solutions of writing and blogging with iOS and Android. My conclusion is that it is only a beautiful myth and it does not work.

If you need to write, I mean serious writing. That is, writing around a thousand words or so not just on and off replying or commenting your social media comments. Then you realize the importance of standing still. You might jot down some quick wits or notes during a commute. But developing those wits and points into a descent piece of writing is another story which could only be down when you are at a quiet and distraction free environment. “On the go” is full of of interruptions and distractions.

Even the distractions can be overcome, the fatigue of the thumbs could not be. Typing with a smartphone is typing with the two thumbs. After thumbing for around 30 minutes, I could barely hold my smartphone in my hands.

With these reasons, writing on the go is not an option for me.

Now for the platform.

I have tried tumblr, medium and some others. Then I reluctantly stick to wordpress. I did use wordpress for a while until the launch of the block editor.

The block editor of wordpress sucks.  
The block editor of wordpress sucks.  
The block editor of wordpress sucks.  

重要的事要說三遍

It is a painful experiences to blog with wordpress. It is also a painful experience to view the blog as the blog is cluttered with visually distracting ads. I have been in a stagnant condition about blogging for a while.

Recently I decided to write my self-study notes in markdown. The experiences is very rewarding. I always have a small soft spot for text files and monospace fonts. Markdown is really my cup of tea. During the process, I discovered mdbook. It is essentially a static web site generator written in Rust. It is fun to play with and write my notes in ByWord with which I am writing this very post.

The pro’s of mdbook is simplicity. The con’s is limitation. While I continue writing my self-study notes with mdbook, I embarked a research of static site generators and hosting solutions. Github is well known for static site web pages. Github pages have got close integration with jelyll. Yet jelyll is very difficult to setup and install in my mac. I quickly gave it up. Then I discovered hugo. It has very good integration with github via github actions. It is just one binary file. No setup no additional tweakings. Yet for each site, additional site-specific configurations are needed.

This key advantage of hugo + github solution is that there is NO ads in the site generated. Most hugo themes are succinct and clean. The workflow gives me the feeling of manage docs as code.

The entire site exists as a git repo which gives me a feeling that I am totally owning my work. I can keep track of the history with git. All markdown, asciidoc contents as well as hugo templates exists as “source code” of the resultant published web site. The semantic is very different.

I am concentrating on my writing, I tune my web site in a deterministic way then finally showing off the final products to the world. In the old wordpress days, I was surrendering my work to the wordpress platform.

I have taken a closer look at hugo and is comfortable with it now. I have even enabled asciidoc with Asciidoctor! But mermaid is not there yet.

So this is pretty much where I am now. Until next time.