This blog is now running on Hugo on CloudFlare Page! Hurray!
The History
The oldest post on this blog is dated December 2013, so it has been over 10 years since I first set up this blog. It was:
On WordPress.com (2013-2016)
Using Hugo (2016-2018)
Bespoke system (2018-2022)
WordPress.com (2022-2024)
Back to Hugo (2024~) ← HERE
(You can check the history of the first 3 sites on this blog post from 2020)
The main reasons I was switching between each solution was the cons of each method.
Cons of WordPress.com
Limited theme support (on free plan). I could write HTML/CSS so doing custom design was never a problem for me.
Limited components to use in the post (for more complex posts).
Themes can look weird when you do not have all the content the theme expected.
Cons of Bespoke system
Not as polished as prebuilt solutions.
Higher barrier to write a post.
Cons of Hugo (back in the day)
Writing new post require deployment which is not as easy as WordPress.com.
Need to handle all responsive image using shortcodes which is not nice.
Components require using shortcodes, which, again, is not nice.
But in 2024, most of the hugo’s cons are solved! Back in 2018 I find developing with hugo to be tolerable, but now it’s a breeze!
For deployment, I now use CloudFlare page connected to GitHub. Back in the day I know Netlify exists but Netlify doesn’t (or didn’t) do SSL for custom domains. There may be other players at that time, but they are no as big.
Hugo now has a render hook which allow me to customize how the default Markdown image are rendered. This fixed the image shortcodes problem.
The blockquote render hook is very versatile and can be abused to make rendering of other components very easy.
Which make hugo pretty much unbeatable to be honest.
Markdown and Front-Matter
There was actually another reason for my 2018 Bespoke solution. In that period, no Markdown editors recognise front-matter. The editor would parse the front-matter the same as regular paragraph. Even WebStorm didn’t recognise front-matter back then.
In 2024, most Markdown editors now recognise front-matter and automatically remove them when doing in-editor preview.
On using the system font stack
I liked using system font stack to make the site lighter. This blog is also intended to be light (but the current theme is not very light…) so I originally use the system font stack.
But I didn’t like how many characters looked. After much consideration, I decided to use serif font for the body. I also changed the header font to a narrower font, which make the whole site looks TONS better.
Not sure if using system font stack is really beneficial any more because of the fast internet.
On Older Posts
I didn’t like how my older posts looked today. I did fix up grammar and formatting, but I tried not to change them too much. In a way, it is a relic of my past.