Hugo
Tool, static site, by Hugo authors
Assessment
The generator to pick when build speed or a dependency-free install matters most. For a site that is really a set of structured records, Eleventy's data model won, which is the only reason Hugo is not the one in use.
2026-10-09
Strengths
- One binary, no runtime: install and build in seconds
- Very fast builds, thousands of pages in under a second
- A large theme ecosystem
Limitations
- Go templates are terse and less pleasant for data-heavy pages
- Reshaping structured records per page takes more ceremony than Eleventy's data cascade
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go and shipped as a single binary: Markdown content, Go templates, taxonomies, and builds measured in milliseconds per page.[1] It is a common choice for documentation sites and blogs where a theme does most of the work.
Why it was considered
No Node, no node_modules, and a build that would never be the slow part. On a server with nothing but a shell, a Hugo site is one file to copy.
Why not this time
The site is a set of records with many fields, pages that compute lists from those fields, and a public/private switch over the whole collection. Hugo can do all of it, but the Go template syntax and the lack of a data cascade make each of those steps more work than in Eleventy, and the difference compounds.[2]
When to use it
A blog or documentation site from a theme, a very large site where build time matters, or any machine where installing Node is the obstacle.
History
- 2026-10-09: article written and published.
- 2026-10-09: entry created.
Comments
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