This is my very first blog post on this new website. This website is built using Hugo, a static website generator. I learnt about static generated websites when I visited the website of Eugene Yan. I went there to learn about how he took notes and how he built his Zettelkasten. I loved the way his website looked.
When I looked under the hood (Ctrl + U), I found that he was using Jekyll. I also learnt that this is a new way of putting together websites. They are put together as a static websites but built using a software called a static site generator. I tried to setup Jekyll on my computer but I found it difficult to do with help from a YouTube tutorial.
I found a few tutorials on YouTube from Giraffe Academy by Mike Dane. I learnt here how to setup Hugo and generate the first version of the website on localhost, my computer. I, then, read a lesson on FreeCodeCamp.org on how to create a Hugo blog. This lesson taught me how to build a blog using Hugo, hosted on Github and deployed on Netlify. Once I learnt Hugo, I did not try any other static website generators.
Why Hugo?
I started blogging in 2005 with Blogger. I moved to WordPress in 2006. I have stayed with some flavour of WordPress since then. My last blog, pradx.me was hosted on WordPress.com. I felt there was a lot of push from WordPress.com to move to the higher tier and that many options (advertising or Google Analytics, for example) that I wanted to try were not available on the basic Personal plan. The push was so much that I stopped paying even for the basic plan. A version of that blog now exists on the free plan there.
I thought of moving to WordPress.org to fix this problem. I found that Automattic have now started charging for Akismet (anti-spam) and Jetpack (more or less SEO and all that jazz). The charge seemed to be such that it made hosting a blog on WordPress.com attractive. There were so many emails that were trying to get me to pay for several Automattic services. I wanted to leave the WordPress environment.
This experience pushed me to look for alternatives. For a moment, I considered going back to Blogger. You can find this Twitter thread to understand the alternatives I was looking at.
I think for 2021 I should go back to Blogger. My only fear there is that Google might shut it down at any time.
— Pradeep | പ്രദീപ് (@pradx) December 25, 2020
I chose Hugo. The way I have set things up, I have to use github. Hugo requires me to write the blog post in markdown. But, I think this is a win-win for me. I see people use Github to do many things. I see myself coming here to write blog posts in Markdown. As I use this interface, I will learn more about how to use Github itself. Perhaps, I can learn to write documentation here as well. What I learn will be useful for the work that I do.
What’s different?
When looking for a new domain name for myself, I found that the .space domain name for my name was available and I bought it. However, when I checked out the .space domain registrar’s website, I found that they were advertising the domain for the creative types. I would love to be a part of both crowds - the space geeks and the creative types.
While looking for the .space domain for myself, I found out that they are advertising the .space domain for the creative types and not really for the space fellows like me. However, a few people and companies have got themselves the .space domain anyways. I want to be a part of both crowds, the creative crowd as well as the space folks.
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