Experimenting with Astro and Hugo
With all the extra time I’ve had on my hands recently, I’ve been diving into more development talks, listening to more podcasts, and reading a whole lot more. One thing that caught my attention was a GitHub Rubber Duck Thursday session where Cassidy Williams cassidoo.co worked on her blog site, which is built in Astro. Around the same time, I also listened to a podcast, though I can’t for the life of me remember which podcast it was, where someone was talking about Hugo.
Either way, I was intrigued. Both Astro and Hugo seemed like interesting tools, so I decided to play around with them and see what kind of damage I could do.
Rebuilding My Site in Astro
I started with Astro by rebuilding my site, wyliefisher.com. Overall, the process went relatively smoothly, though I had my fair share of stumbling blocks. But even with a few hiccups, I had the site mostly redone in about a week. Since then, I’ve continued refining things: cleaning up code, tweaking layouts, and optimizing performance.
One of the things I had to go back and fix was my use of images. Initially, I wasn’t using Astro’s built-in Image component, so I had to go through and replace all my img tags. Thankfully, that was an easy adjustment. After a lot of tinkering, referencing the Astro docs, rewriting things, and adding this blog, I feel like I finally have a solid grasp on Astro. It’s been a fun process, and the framework itself feels flexible, intuitive, and enjoyable to work with.
Trying (and Struggling With) Hugo
While working with Astro, I also decided to spin up a small calculator project using Hugo. This experience was less than smooth.
Right out of the gate, I found Hugo’s setup a bit confusing. The initial project structure wasn’t as intuitive to me, and the documentation didn’t always provide the clarity I needed. I even struggled to find a solid reference project that could help me piece things together. Eventually, I did get something working, but not without several days of frustration, a lot of trial and error, and some help from AI.
The end result? Functional, but not as polished or as easy to update as my Astro site. Granted, I didn’t give Hugo nearly as much time as I did Astro, but that’s mainly because I found myself naturally drawn into Astro, while Hugo kept throwing roadblocks in my way. That said, now that I have a solid handle on Astro, I’d like to revisit the Hugo calculators project and see if I can refine it, learn more, and maybe even grow to appreciate it.
My Takeaway
If you’re looking to build a quick site, I’d go with Astro. It’s intuitive, has great documentation, and just feels good to work with. Hugo, on the other hand, didn’t click for me as easily, but that doesn’t mean I’m writing it off just yet. There’s always more to learn, and sometimes the things that frustrate us most at first end up becoming our favorite tools.
We’ll see where this goes.