Hugo and static sites.

Why I had enough of Ghost and MySql and why static sites work better for me.

Docker and Traefik setups are all good and fun until something breaks. That something breaking is usually my sanity.

Ghost is all fine and dandy for lots of uses, normally if you are wanting to make a blog with lots of engagement, mailgroups and so on but it can be a pain in the arse when it comes to using Docker and MySQL8 which it now uses by default.

If you’ve got this working in a Docker setup - good for you.

I just ended up getting annoyed with it and I’m just a one man MrBog and I’m not going to set the world alight with my glittering technical prowess.

What if we can just go nicely low-tech and use a static site generator like Hugo ?

Well we can, and I did.

No database on a self-hosted setup makes sense as it becomes very fast to load and super easy to deploy as it’s all good old Html and CSS so there’s not an awful lot to break and you can use Github to keep track of all your efforts too.

I’m using the Parsa Hugo Theme and it’s pretty well documented.

Use Formspree.io for a basic contact form and it’s kind of there really.

Editing is by Sublime text editor and uses Goldmark Markdown which is felxible and doesn’t take long to learn.

Yeah, you can use a CMS but where’s the fun?

There’s all sorts of things you can tweak and redesign and I think less to break without some grumpy database in the way.

Not much can be done with my boxng glove typos and dodgy eyes though.