176 lines
7.8 KiB
Markdown
176 lines
7.8 KiB
Markdown
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date = "2016-04-24T02:50:28+02:00"
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draft = false
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title = "What is Hugo?"
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Hugo is a general-purpose website framework. Technically speaking, Hugo is
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a static site generator. Unlike other systems which dynamically build a page
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every time a visitor requests one, Hugo does the building when you create
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your content. Since websites are viewed far more often than they are
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edited, Hugo is optimized for website viewing while providing a great
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writing experience.
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Sites built with Hugo are extremely fast and very secure. Hugo sites can
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be hosted anywhere, including [Appernetic][], [Heroku][], [GoDaddy][], [DreamHost][],
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[GitHub Pages][], [Surge][], [Aerobatic][], [Google Cloud Storage][],
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[Amazon S3][] and [CloudFront][], and work well with CDNs.
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Hugo sites run without dependencies on expensive runtimes like Ruby,
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Python or PHP and without dependencies on any databases.
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[Appernetic]: https://appernetic.io/
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[Heroku]: https://www.heroku.com/
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[GoDaddy]: https://www.godaddy.com/
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[DreamHost]: http://www.dreamhost.com/
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[GitHub Pages]: https://pages.github.com/
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[Aerobatic]: https://www.aerobatic.com/
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[Google Cloud Storage]: http://cloud.google.com/storage/
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[Amazon S3]: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
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[CloudFront]: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ "Amazon CloudFront"
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[Surge]: https://surge.sh
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We think of Hugo as the ideal website creation tool. With nearly instant
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build times and the ability to rebuild whenever a change is made, Hugo
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provides a very fast feedback loop. This is essential when you are
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designing websites, but also very useful when creating content.
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## What makes Hugo different?
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Web site generators render content into HTML files. Most are "dynamic
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site generators." That means the HTTP
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server (which is the program running on your website that the user's
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browser talks to) runs the generator to create a new HTML file
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each and every time a user wants to view a page.
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Creating the page dynamically means that the computer hosting
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the HTTP server has to have enough memory and CPU to effectively run
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the generator around the clock. If not, then the user has to wait
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in a queue for the page to be generated.
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Nobody wants users to wait longer than needed, so the dynamic site
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generators programmed their systems to cache the HTML files. When
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a file is cached, a copy of it is temporarily stored on the computer.
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It is much faster for the HTTP server to send that copy the next time
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the page is requested than it is to generate it from scratch.
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Hugo takes caching a step further. All HTML files are rendered on your
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computer. You can review the files before you copy them to the computer
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hosting the HTTP server. Since the HTML files aren't generated dynamically,
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we say that Hugo is a "static site generator."
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Not running a web site generator on your HTTP server has many benefits.
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The most noticeable is performance - HTTP servers are very good at
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sending files. So good that you can effectively serve the same number
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of pages with a fraction of the memory and CPU needed for a dynamic site.
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Hugo has two components to help you build and test your web site. The
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one that you'll probably use most often is the built-in HTTP server.
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When you run `hugo server`, Hugo renders all of your content into
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HTML files and then runs an HTTP server on your computer so that you
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can see what the pages look like.
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The second component is used when you're ready to publish your web
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site to the computer running your website. Running Hugo without any
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actions will rebuild your entire web site using the `baseurl` setting
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from your site's configuration file. That's required to have your page
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links work properly with most hosting companies.
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## How fast is Hugo?
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{{% youtube CdiDYZ51a2o %}}
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## What does Hugo do?
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In technical terms, Hugo takes a source directory of files and
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templates and uses these as input to create a complete website.
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Hugo boasts the following features:
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### General
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* Extremely fast build times (~1 ms per page)
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* Completely cross platform: Runs on <i class="fa fa-apple"></i> Mac OS X, <i class="fa fa-linux"></i> Linux, <i class="fa fa-windows"></i> Windows, and more!
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* Easy [installation](/overview/installing/)
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* Render changes [on the fly](/overview/usage/) with [LiveReload](/extras/livereload/) as you develop
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* Complete theme support
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* Host your site anywhere
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### Organization
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* Straightforward [organization](/content/organization/)
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* Support for [website sections](/content/sections/)
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* Completely customizable [URLs](/extras/urls/)
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* Support for configurable [taxonomies](/taxonomies/overview/) which includes categories and tags. Create your own custom organization of content
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* Ability to [sort content](/content/ordering/) as you desire
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* Automatic [table of contents](/extras/toc/) generation
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* Dynamic menu creation
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* [Pretty URLs](/extras/urls/) support
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* [Permalink](/extras/permalinks/) pattern support
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* [Aliases](/extras/aliases/) (redirects)
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### Content
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* Native support for content written in [Markdown](/content/example/)
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* Support for other languages through _external helpers_, see [supported formats](/content/supported-formats)
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* Support for TOML, YAML and JSON metadata in [frontmatter](/content/front-matter/)
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* Completely [customizable homepage](/layout/homepage/)
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* Support for multiple [content types](/content/types/)
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* Automatic and user defined [summaries](/content/summaries/)
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* [Shortcodes](/extras/shortcodes/) to enable rich content inside of Markdown
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* ["Minutes to Read"](/layout/variables/) functionality
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* ["Wordcount"](/layout/variables/) functionality
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### Additional Features
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* Integrated [Disqus](https://disqus.com/) comment support
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* Integrated [Google Analytics](https://google-analytics.com/) support
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* Automatic [RSS](/layout/rss/) creation
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* Support for [Go](http://golang.org/pkg/html/template/), [Amber](https://github.com/eknkc/amber) and [Ace](http://ace.yoss.si/) HTML templates
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* Syntax [highlighting](/extras/highlighting/) powered by [Pygments](http://pygments.org/)
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See what's coming next in the [roadmap](/meta/roadmap/).
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## Who should use Hugo?
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Hugo is for people that prefer writing in a text editor over
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a browser.
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Hugo is for people who want to hand code their own website without
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worrying about setting up complicated runtimes, dependencies and
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databases.
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Hugo is for people building a blog, company site, portfolio, tumblog,
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documentation, single page site or a site with thousands of
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pages.
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## Why did you write Hugo?
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I wrote Hugo ultimately for a few reasons. First, I was disappointed with
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WordPress, my then website solution. It rendered slowly. I couldn't create
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content as efficiently as I wanted to and needed to be online to write
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posts. The constant security updates and the horror stories of people's
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hacked blogs. I hated how content was written in HTML instead of the much
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simpler Markdown. Overall, I felt like it got in my way more than it helped
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me from writing great content.
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I looked at existing static site generators like [Jekyll][], [Middleman][] and [nanoc][].
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All had complicated dependencies to install and took far longer to render
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my blog with hundreds of posts than I felt was acceptable. I wanted
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a framework to be able to get rapid feedback while making changes to the
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templates, and the 5+-minute render times was just too slow. In general,
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they were also very blog minded and didn't have the ability to have
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different content types and flexible URLs.
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[Jekyll]: http://jekyllrb.com/
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[Middleman]: https://middlemanapp.com/
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[nanoc]: http://nanoc.ws/
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I wanted to develop a fast and full-featured website framework without
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dependencies. The [Go language][] seemed to have all of the features I needed
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in a language. I began developing Hugo in Go and fell in love with the
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language. I hope you will enjoy using (and contributing to) Hugo as much
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as I have writing it.
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[Go language]: http://golang.org/ "The Go Programming Language"
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