front matter

 

foreword

Hugo was born out of two beliefs: 1) website maintenance (authoring, hosting, securing, etc.) could be dramatically simplified, and 2) the Go programming language and its ecosystem would provide the right base for a fast, straightforward, and productive website engine.

As I write this in late spring of 2022, we’re approaching the ninth anniversary of Hugo’s first public announcement (June 2013). Reflecting back to the months leading up to Hugo’s first release, I had recently begun investigating a new programming language from Google, the Go programming language. It had just reached 1.0 status, and I was looking for a project so I could learn through building. Simultaneously, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my WordPress-powered blog that was growing in cost and complexity. I calculated that I had spent more time doing maintenance and security patches than authoring new posts.

I had begun playing with the static site generators available at the time; Jekyll and Pelican being the two most prominent. Installing was complicated, however, taking me a few hours each because they both required me to first install the entire toolset for each programming language and then all the language dependencies. After that, I needed to install the software and all of its dependencies, requiring hundreds of packages to be fetched and resolved.

preface

acknowledgments

about this book

Who should read this book

How this book is organized: A road map

About the code

liveBook discussion forum

Other online resources

about the author

about the cover illustration