Not long ago, this blog was running on WordPress.
For many, WordPress is the go-to platform to get started with a website. It’s feature-rich, flexible, and widely supported. But for my use case — a simple blog — it quickly started to feel like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture.
I found myself constantly maintaining:
- WordPress itself
- Plugins (many needed just to make it feel modern)
- A full database stack
- Security patches and performance tweaks
All of that, just to serve some static text and images.
That’s when I realized: I wanted something simpler. Something faster. Something that just got out of the way and let me write.
Enter Hugo & PaperMod
While researching alternatives, I stumbled upon a video by TechnoTim called “How I Built My Website With Hugo and GitHub Actions.”
It was exactly what I was looking for:
✅ Static site generator → no database
✅ Lightning fast
✅ Markdown-based → just write in plain text
✅ Fully customizable themes
✅ Minimal server footprint → perfect for my homelab
The Migration
The migration looked like this:
- I removed the old WordPress stack
- Installed Hugo and the excellent PaperMod theme
- Built the blog locally
- Served it behind my Caddy reverse proxy
A few hiccups along the way (looking at you, Hugo versioning and PaperMod master branch!), but here I am — writing my first post in Markdown, not a clunky browser editor.
Why This Matters
Now this blog is:
- Blazing fast
- Simple to maintain
- Version-controlled (git)
- Portable (no database lock-in)
- A joy to write in
If you’re considering a similar path — I highly recommend checking out TechnoTim’s video and giving Hugo a try.
Thanks for visiting — more posts to come!
Published using Hugo + PaperMod behind a Caddy reverse proxy on my Proxmox-hosted homelab.