If you read this on a feed reader app you might not notice the change, but I have switched from Wordpress to Hugo, after over 15 years.
The oldest posts on this blog date back to 2006, and as far as I remember they were written with Wordpress. I’ve hosted many sites with Wordpress, so why the change?
In the end, it came down to complexity and control.
Over the years, Wordpress has grown from a simple PHP blogging platform to a very complicated Content management system. People and companies use Wordpress to host many different types of sites. There is a complex and sometimes expensive market for themes. There is a whole ecosystem that supports the development of Wordpress and Plugins for almost anything you might want to do with the software.
But the reason I’m switching comes down to control. With the complications added by the complexities of Wordpress growing, controlling and working through customizations is much more complex. I don’t understand all the steps that are run to generate the page I see in front of me. By using something that generative, I can better control what I put up. The content is static, but comments can be done with plugins.
There are downsides, of course. So far, the biggest one is that it takes me longer to post. While before I could post from pretty much anywhere, now I have to write a markdown post and then publish it through the Hugo tool. Because of this, even, though I switched several weeks ago, I have yet to post something new, this is the first post.
My hope is that by learning how to do the posting process more, that I will hopefully get faster at it and it will cease to be such an impediment.