Hugo is an awesome open-source static site generator, which you can use to create beautiful portfolio websites and blogs. Hugo started as a side project in 2013 and quickly became one of the most popular frameworks for building static websites. In fact, this website is also built with Hugo! So, what are the ingredients that make Hugo so great? Here are the most important reasons why you should power your website with Hugo.

Speed

Hugo is absurdly fast! The developers claim that one webpage can be built for less than 1 milisecond!

Ease of use

Another very impotant reason to use Hugo. Hugo is not only faster but also a lot easier to use compared to other available website generators out there. While it certainly requires some technical knowledge to set it up, it has an awesome documentation and it is definitely the most user-friendly and intuitive site generator I have worked with.

Functionalities

Markdown
Content in Hugo is generated via markdown files. Markdown is a light-weight markup language that lets you add content without writing custom html. However, if you feel like writing html, you are also free to do so! Templates
Hugo’s templating system is simply outstanding! You can seperate code in partials and use Go language (the language behind Hugo) to add programming logic whenever you need. There are two types of templates you can use in Hugo. These are the single page templates and list page templates. There can also be a different page template for the home page. You can also create your own custom page templates.

Shortcodes
Hugo is written in Go language and comes with pre-defined shortcodes to let you do more with markdown syntax. For example, you can use a shortcode instead of custom HTML to embed an youtube video. Just like that:

You can use a nice shortcode to highlight code:

<section id="main">
  <div>
   <h1 id="title">{{ .Title }}</h1>
    {{ range .Data.Pages }}
        {{ .Render "summary"}}
    {{ end }}
  </div>
</section>

You can also use a shortcode to add an image. You can even create your custom shortcodes!

HTML and Javascript inside post content
You can put html or javascript in the markdown file whereever you want! No need for plugins or extra customization.

Taxonomies
Hugo supports taxonomies such as categories and tags out of the box. You can easily configure them or even create your own custom taxonomies!

Themes
Last but not least, Hugo has a really nice collection of more than 300 open-source themes that you can use to get you started as soon as possible!

Disqus

Hugo ships with Disqus template. This is a comment system for static websites. In this way, you can easily include comments in your Hugo blog.

Free Hosting on GitHub Pages

Hugo saves you money. It is a static website and as such can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages! GitHub Pages is really awesome, because you have full access to your website data, you get ssl certificate for free and there is even an option to add a custom domain name.

Multilanguage Support

With Hugo, you can easily create a fully-functional multilingual website. You can read more about that here: How to Make a Mulilingual Website with Hugo

Thriving community

Last but not least, Hugo has an amazing, constantly growing community of enthusiasts, bloggers and developers that are willing to help each other. If you have any question, you can also check their forum, Discourse.GoHugo.io, and you will most likely find an answer to your question.

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