I have had a website, on and off, for a number of years. After tinkering with Blogger way back when, I have used Wordpress, moved to Squarespace, dabbled with Wix, returned to Wordpress, all the while trying out other offerings along the way. Aside from being super critical of what I wrote, I was never completely happy with the platforms. I was either working along a learning curve or getting frustrated at not being able to present things just how I wanted.
Then I saw a personal website that was clean, minimal and exactly what I was trying to create and I started down the static site path via Jekyll before quickly landing on Hugo as my SSG of choice. There was the added bonus it was free and could be hosted for free too.
Starting with Hugo #
I won’t delve into the details of how to get everything set up and running. Thankfully, Hugo has excellent documentation that can help you throughout your journey. It really is simple, but the main steps are:
- Install Hugo on your machine (Windows, Mac, or Linux)
- Install Git
- Create your site with command prompt/terminal
- Your site will be hosted on your machine locally at localhost:1313
That’s it! You now have the fundamental structure and file system to create your own website using Hugo - without having to write a single line of HTML. If you want your website to look just right, then it’s worth doing some research to find the right theme for what you have in mind. Hugo has a theme directory with a solid selection, however I would suggest taking care in selecting one — they range in capabilities and complexity, so make sure yours is well supported with documentation. As you can see in the footer, I went for Blowfish which has a perfect (for me) balance of features and simplicity.
Hosting…. For free! #
With a free static site generator and free theme, the obvious next question is whether hosting can be free too. It can, and there are plenty of options. Platforms such as Render and Netlify provide free hosting for small static sites, and I went with Cloudflare. Once your site is on Github you could also use Github Pages — again, free. Check them out alongside the documentation Hugo provides for deploying to each platform.
Finally, I’d encourage everyone to give creating their own website a go. Crafting and imagining concepts for your website will be immensely satisfying and if you splash out on a domain name, how cool is it having your own little corner of the internet.
