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Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#31
post #3

I made the jump to Hugo too (from a managed service: svbtle) a long time ago, but I'll be really honest... I regret it. I decided to use an off-the-shelf theme, but it didn't quite meet the needs and I forked it; as it so happens Hugo breaks userland relatively often and a complex theme like the one I have requires a lot of maintenance. Like.. a lot . Now I can't really justify the time investment of fixing it so I j…

I moved to a AI maintained custom site generator and it’s ideal for my uses. I have full control over everything and nothing breaks me.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about specifying a version in the CI config? [0] Also, you know that you can do a binary search for the version that works for you? 0.154.0, 0.77.0, 0.115.0 ... (had to do it once myself) [0]: https://github.com/oslc-op/website/blob/9b63c72dbb28c2d3733c...

This is probably the smarter way actually. Alternatively there's apparently some nix flakes that have been developed. So, there's options. I just recommend pinning your version and being intentional about upgrades.

[deleted]

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#34
A few years ago, I decided to migrate my personal website to a Common Lisp (CL) based static site generator that I wrote myself. In hindsight, it is one of the best decisions I have made for my website. It started out at around 850 lines of code and has gradually grown to roughly 1500 lines. It handles statically rendering blog posts, arbitrary pages, a guestbook, comment pages, tag listings, per tag RSS feeds, a consolidated RSS feed, directory listing pages and so on.

I have found it an absolute joy to maintain this piece of little 'machinery' for my website. The best part is that I understand every line of code in it. Every line of code, including all the HTML and CSS, is handcrafted. This gives me two benefits. It helps me maintain my sense of aesthetics in every byte that makes up the website. Further, adding a new feature or section to the site is usually quite quick.

I built the generator as a set of layered, reusable functions, so most new features amount to writing a tiny higher level function that calls the existing ones. For example, last month I wanted to add a 'backlinks' page listing other pages on the web that link to my posts and it took me only about 40 lines of new CL code and less than 15 minutes from wishing for it to publishing it.

Over the years this little hobby project has become quite stable and no longer needs much tinkering. It mostly stays out of the way and lets me focus on writing, which I think is what really matters.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#35
post #26

For long term stuff like a blog, nothing seems to beat static sites generated before deployment, instead of automated tools like Hugo. I tried Hugo years ago and some tiny config or update would suddenly expose all site variables to visitors, which was an incredible security risk. Wordpress and Drupal are a war zone of attacks - judging by the server logs of any of web site. These days you can custom write or design…

Isn't static site generation exactly what hugo does?

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#36
post #34

A few years ago, I decided to migrate my personal website to a Common Lisp (CL) based static site generator that I wrote myself. In hindsight, it is one of the best decisions I have made for my website. It started out at around 850 lines of code and has gradually grown to roughly 1500 lines. It handles statically rendering blog posts, arbitrary pages, a guestbook, comment pages, tag listings, per tag RSS feeds, a con…

Your wife’s Python version is quite impressive. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do the simple thing and just do some string-replacement targeted at a narrow use-case instead of using a complicated templating engine.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#37
post #3

I made the jump to Hugo too (from a managed service: svbtle) a long time ago, but I'll be really honest... I regret it. I decided to use an off-the-shelf theme, but it didn't quite meet the needs and I forked it; as it so happens Hugo breaks userland relatively often and a complex theme like the one I have requires a lot of maintenance. Like.. a lot . Now I can't really justify the time investment of fixing it so I j…

Sorry to hear it. Always sucks to not be able to tweak your own site. I’ve had amazing success debugging compile errors with Claude Code. Perhaps a coding agent could help you get it going again?

Yeah I feel like Claude Code is basically tailor made for a use-case like this. Where:

* I have forked some public repository that has kept up with upstream (IE; lots of example code to draw from)

* Upstream is publishing documentation on what's changing

* The errors are somewhat google-able

* Can be done in a VM and thrown away

* Limited attack surface anyway.

I think you're downvoted because the comment comes across as glib and handwavy (or not moving the discussion forward.. maybe?), and if it was a year ago I would probably argue against it.. but I think Claude Code can definitely help with this.

It just didn't exist as it does in 2023~ or whenever it was that I originally started having issues.

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That said: it shouldn't be necessary. As others in this thread have articulated (well, imo) sometimes software is "done" and Hugo could be "done" software, except it's not; so the onus is on the operator to pin their definition of "done" version.. which is not what you'd expect.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#38
post #3

I made the jump to Hugo too (from a managed service: svbtle) a long time ago, but I'll be really honest... I regret it. I decided to use an off-the-shelf theme, but it didn't quite meet the needs and I forked it; as it so happens Hugo breaks userland relatively often and a complex theme like the one I have requires a lot of maintenance. Like.. a lot . Now I can't really justify the time investment of fixing it so I j…

I moved to a AI maintained custom site generator and it’s ideal for my uses. I have full control over everything and nothing breaks me.

I'm not sure if there should be a /s there. AI to me seems to be the antithesis of stable.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#39
post #3

I made the jump to Hugo too (from a managed service: svbtle) a long time ago, but I'll be really honest... I regret it. I decided to use an off-the-shelf theme, but it didn't quite meet the needs and I forked it; as it so happens Hugo breaks userland relatively often and a complex theme like the one I have requires a lot of maintenance. Like.. a lot . Now I can't really justify the time investment of fixing it so I j…

I’ve slowly grown to realize there’s some software you just don’t need to update. A static site generator (almost certainly) won’t have security issues as long as you control the input and the output is just a bunch of static files. Unless the new version of the software includes some feature I need, I can be totally fine just running an old version forever. I could just write down the version of the SSG my site buil…

Is there any static site generator where you specify the version you use, and the launcher will simply run the old binary that you want?

Like most build systems work, for example when you set a "rust-version" in Cargo.toml and only bump it when you explicitely want to. This way it will still use the older version on a fresh checkout.

Re: Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo

#40
I really like Hugo as well. I've found it significantly faster than Jekyll which makes iterating much more pleasant and it's a single binary to download/run vs having to deal with Ruby and its package manager.

I'm amazed there still isn't a decent free simple to host CMS solution with live page previews, a basic page builder, and simple hosting yet though. Is there one?

There's https://demo.decapcms.org/ (previously Netlify CMS) that you install and run via adding a short JavaScript snippet to a page. It connects to GitHub directly to edit content. You can running it locally or online, but you need some hosting glue to connect to GitHub. Netlify provides this but more options would be nice and I think they limit how many total users can connect on free plans. You can get something like a page builder set up via custom content blocks, but I don't think there's going to be a simple way to render live previews via Hugo (written in Go) in a browser. A JavaScript based SSG would help here, but now you have to deal with the JavaScript ecosystem.

@geerlingguy Not a huge deal but noticed (scanning with https://www.checkbot.io/) if you click a tag in a post, it has an unnecessary redirect causing a speed bump that's easy to fix e.g. the post has a link to https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/drupal which then redirects to https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/drupal/.

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