Site moved to Hugo

Moving from WordPress to Hugo

This site used to run on WordPress for years. It did the job, but it came with the usual baggage: upgrades, plugins, and a stack that felt heavier than what I need for a personal notes site. I wanted something simpler and more robust for long-term archiving.

Why a static site generator

A static site generator keeps things light and fast. Pages are prebuilt, hosting is straightforward, and there is far less surface area to maintain. That means fewer updates, fewer dependencies, and fewer surprises. It also fits the way I write: plain text, versioned in Git, and easy to move.

What is Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is fast, flexible, and handles large content trees without feeling slow. For me it is a good match because I can keep everything as Markdown, build locally, and publish a clean static output.

Current local version: hugo v0.154.5+extended+withdeploy (darwin/arm64, BuildDate 2026-01-11, VendorInfo Homebrew).

Theme: Hextra

I chose the Hextra theme because it is minimal, readable, and gives me a solid navigation structure for a large archive. It also plays well with shortcodes and custom sections, which helped me reshape the homepage into a more personal CV and notes hub.

Extra changes I added

Beyond the theme swap, I started adding small custom pieces that were hard to do in WordPress without extra plugins. The biggest one so far is the FTP tracker: a CSV-backed table and a Chart.js line chart, rendered directly in the post (see the FTP changes page). It keeps the data readable and makes trends obvious at a glance.

This is the kind of lightweight customization I wanted: keep the content simple, but make it look and feel modern without dragging in a full CMS.