Re: Shutting down freesoftware.org.au domain/website?
On 21/7/26 17:15, Matt Cengia wrote:
On 21 Jul 2026, at 11:36, Ben Sturmfels via Free-software-melb <free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au> wrote:
2. Convert the website to use a static site generator for ease of future hosting (currently a database-driven site). Doing this, rather than just taking an HTML archive, leaves the door open for future updates. I don't suppose anyone is an expert on Hugo or another non-JS static site generator? I can script an export of all blog entries and pages to Markdown.
I can speak Hugo, but don't really have capacity to help out much, and having used it for a few years for my own site, generally wouldn't wish Go templating upon anyone if I could help it. If I were looking to build a static site today and avoid any of the JS-based website generators (e.g. 11ty, which I keep hearing really good things about, or Astro), I'd probably look at a Python option like Pelican. https://jamstack.org/generators/ I know some SSGs use Jinja templates so if you're coming from something using that, it might make migration simpler
Very interesting to hear, thanks Matt. I've used Pelican a couple of times over the years, but figured I should get out of my comfort zone and see why Hugo is so popular. Thanks for the tips. Ben
On 2026-07-22 09:14, Ben Sturmfels wrote:
On 21/7/26 17:15, Matt Cengia wrote:
I can speak Hugo, but don't really have capacity to help out much, and having used it for a few years for my own site, generally wouldn't wish Go templating upon anyone if I could help it. If I were looking to build a static site today and avoid any of the JS-based website generators (e.g. 11ty, which I keep hearing really good things about, or Astro), I'd probably look at a Python option like Pelican. https://jamstack.org/generators/ I know some SSGs use Jinja templates so if you're coming from something using that, it might make migration simpler
Very interesting to hear, thanks Matt. I've used Pelican a couple of times over the years, but figured I should get out of my comfort zone and see why Hugo is so popular. Thanks for the tips.
I think it's because Hugo is fast? I also rather like the way it does content hierarchy and categorisation using taxonomies, and its approach to template/theme inheritance/overrides, but try as I might, I just can _not_ come to like Golang templates, regardless of whether they're used for Hugo themes, Helm Charts, Docker/Podman/etc output formatting, etc. It just feels like it makes a bunch of assumption about the user's experience using Go as a language, and the way the templates handle variable scoping etc is something I have not managed to fully wrap my head around. Happy to chat about it sometime if you like. I'm sure you can work out where to find me. :) -- Regards, Matthew Cengia (pronouns: they/them/theirs)
Ben Sturmfels via Free-software-melb <free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au> writes:
Very interesting to hear, thanks Matt. I've used Pelican a couple of times over the years, but figured I should get out of my comfort zone and see why Hugo is so popular. Thanks for the tips.
Last time I researched static site generators I found there were so many I got overwhelmed. https://jamstack.org/generators/ I ended up converting my personal website from Jekyll (which I think has become stagnant lately) to zola, and so far been happy with zola. -- Brian May @ Linux Penguins
participants (3)
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Ben Sturmfels -
Brian May -
Matt Cengia