Learn Web Development Using Hugo

Web frameworks are a dime a dozen, but they serve different purposes. Hugo was developed specifically for certain types of websites and is optimally tailored for their requirements. Some of its most noticeable properties and advantages are discussed below.

There is another aspect to the article, though. Hugo’s manageable complexity recommends it not only as practical tool, but also as an excellent learning platform.

Special Area of Application

Hugo is characterized by two main features. Firstly, it generates static websites, which in practice results in significantly faster loading times. Secondly, Hugo focuses on text-based content. Main content is written in user-friendly Markdown or similar formats, which makes Hugo ideal for personal websites, blogs, documentation, portfolios and magazines.

Sites of this type often present their content on overview pages. A blog, for example, typically displays the title, publication date and excerpt of a post. Such layouts are a central component of Hugo and can be easily adapted to individual needs.

Hugo avoids Complexity

The features mentioned in the previous subsection imply that you cannot do many of the things that you would normally use a web framework for. However, this can be seen as an advantage—especially when seen from the perspective of beginners to the practice of web development.

Websites are usually the result of a complex interplay of different technologies. On the visible side - the so-called frontend - content is created and structured with HTML, styled with CSS, and supplemented with dynamic processes using JavaScript. Technologies such as AJAX make interactive interaction possible.

Other technologies are required when user data is stored or processed. In web applications such as social media platforms or online stores, users must be able to register and log in; for this purpose, information is stored on servers in databases. Such data processing requires software that runs on the server. The languages used to program the backend typically follow an object-oriented approach to software development.

Other frameworks make rather specific demands on what skills are required to use them. Ruby on Rails or Laravel impose an architecture on their applications in which various constructs of object-oriented programming interlock in a predefined way. Of course, this design pattern must be understood before the frameworks can be applied to create software in an orderly fashion.

This can be overwhelming for beginners. While many online tutorials use toy examples, with Hugo it’s possible to create real website right from the get-go. As you familiarize yourself with the underlying mechanisms, you will acquire concepts and skills that are required for more complex projects.

Hugo as a Learning Platform

The maintainers of Hugo promise that simple websites can be set up in just a few minutes. From there the basic structure can be expanded to step by step adapt the website in the light of your own ideas.

The various components of the system can be analyzed and applied as largely self-contained modules. With the help of the documentation, it’s somewhat easy to see which changes can be made from the interface exposed to you. The newly acquired understanding can be applied immediately in order to adapt and improve specific aspects of the rendered website.

Hugo’s focus on static pages simplifies the front end for developers, since JavaScript is completely eliminated from the equation. If you feel unsure about HTML or CSS and you would rather avoid their demands for the time being, you can use themes. On the official website you will find a good selection of appealing options. With this in place you can at first fully concentrate on writing your main content by using Markdown.

Even if you started from zero, you will have learned quite a lot at this point. You used the command-line to create your project and to run the development server, you have written text files, and you’ve learned the basics of Markdown syntax. You may also have worked with a text editor for the first time and gained a first impression of its features and peculiarities.

For a more in-depth understanding, it is of course necessary to write your own code. While creating a comprehensive and responsive design is no easy task, you can still make smaller adjustments to the existing theme design with your own style rules. You can also use the browser’s DevTools to analyze the existing declarations and to better understand what makes up your theme and layout.

HTML plays an immediate role in creating templates, another feature you’ll have to look into sooner or later. This provides a good opportunity to learn about best practices when creating web pages. For example, it’s important to know what information should be included in the head of individual pages and how to meet these requirements using base templates.

As already mentioned, backend languages usually follow the object-oriented programming paradigm. Even though Hugo does not support server-side data processing, it is suitable for a gentle introduction to the object-oriented way of thinking. This is because Go is used in the template context as a language that models components such as individual pages, resources or the website itself as objects.

The data available in the context of a template is injected automatically and does not have to be explicitly defined as classes or instantiated as objects. An understanding of these terms is therefore not strictly required. Users simply need to know how the context works and how to retrieve data using predefined methods.

These tools can be used to create professional websites. Even if Hugo is not suitable for all types of content, much of what you learned can be transferred over to more complex environments.

Additional Features

In addition to its core functions, Hugo offers a range of features that distinguishes the framework from other static-site generators such as Jekyll or Pelican.

In this context, the included command-line tools should be mentioned first. They offer a live reloading server, which recognizes changes and automatically updates the pages opened in the browser. Another helpful feature is the archetype system, which can be used to pre-fill new content files with metadata and a suitable structure for different content types.

In addition, Hugo offers comprehensive support for the localization (l10n) of content, making it ideal for multilingual websites. The output of various functions and methods is automatically adjusted to take regional differences in presentation and formatting into account.