I’ve wanted to bring my website back for a while, especially as I’ve become less active on social media. In an era of endless feeds and brain rot, returning to a personal website and blog feels right.
The annual web hosting bill added up, so I eventually cancelled it. I used to run WordPress, which does offer a nice back-end for managing content. But needing PHP, a MySQL database, and frequent updates to keep things secure always felt too heavy for my needs.
I’ve moved to Hugo, a static site generator. Assets are precompiled locally before deployment, and a GitHub repository can host the site. Simple and free. I’ll gradually move some of my old blog posts over.
If you’re on Windows, it takes just a few PowerShell commands:
winget install Hugo.Hugo
hugo new site my-website
cd my-website
hugo new content/posts/hello-world/index.md
hugo server # Starts a server at http://localhost:1313
Hugo’s local server provides hot reloading, so you can see changes without refreshing your browser. A huge (hugo?) win.
Writing in Markdown is one of the main draws: simple, clean, and no WYSIWYG metadata cluttering the install. Visual Studio Code and most other IDEs can preview it, too.
One thing you learn as you get older: simplicity beats complexity. Big frameworks are fun; maintaining a pile of them is not.
I plan to share more of my work and write about Godot, the simple yet powerful game engine that rekindled my love for making games.
See you around, stranger. 👋