Hugo

Introduction

I previously managed a blog hosted on a WordPress installation running on Amazon Lightsail. While the setup worked well, maintaining WordPress required significant effort—keeping it updated, securing the installation, and managing comments. Looking for a more efficient and low-cost solution, I began exploring static site generators like Jekyll and Hugo, alongside free or inexpensive hosting options.

I chose Cloudflare Pages as my hosting platform because it allowed me to deploy directly from a private GitHub repository—something not all free hosting solutions support. I was already using Cloudflare for DNS management, so keeping everything within the same ecosystem made sense. As for the static site generator, I opted for Hugo largely out of personal preference. It’s fast, easy to set up, and doesn’t require the Ruby toolchain that Jekyll depends on..

Step 1. Install Hugo

Go to Hugo releases and download the appropriate version for your OS and architecture.

Save it somewhere specific as we will be using it in the next step.

More complete instructions are available at Install Hugo

Step 2. Build the Docs

Hugo has its own example site which happens to also be the documentation site you are reading right now.