As a developer and content creator, I’ve gone through the endless cycle of building sites with Hugo, getting obsessed with technical tweaks, and eventually drifting back to WordPress. Here’s why, and what I’ve learned through this process.
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Hugo: The Technical Deep Dive Trap
Whenever I start a project in Hugo, I find myself spending more time modifying templates, optimizing speed, and experimenting with layouts, rather than actually writing articles. Hugo’s flexibility encourages this: it’s a static site generator that rewards those who enjoy customizing every detail. I enjoy building unique themes, implementing custom shortcodes, and squeezing every millisecond from page loads.
The problem? The actual blogging, the thing I set out to do, inevitably takes a back seat to technical tinkering.
The Pain of Changing Themes
Unlike what the marketing might suggest, changing themes in Hugo is rarely straightforward. Each theme has different layouts, requires specific frontmatter formats, and often expects a unique directory structure. Switching themes is likely to result in build errors, broken pages, and lots of manual fixes. Sometimes you can’t even build the site at all after a theme switch without labor-intensive adjustments.
Static site generators like Hugo promise portability, but this stops at Markdown files. The reality is that theme incompatibilities and config rewrites make “just swapping themes” a major headache.
Why I Drift Back to WordPress
After a while, the technical grind gets exhausting and I start to miss the simplicity of WordPress. Here’s why:
- Writing is Effortless: WordPress lets you write, edit, and manage images from anywhere in your browser. Real-time previews, scheduled posts, and built-in media management make it a powerful content tool out-of-the-box.
- Theme and Plugin Freedom: You can drastically change your site’s look and functionality with a click. Plugins cover common needs and themes just work.
- Maintenance is Lighter: There’s no need to manage a local development environment, Git repository, or deployment pipeline. Everything happens in the browser.
- Community and Support: When you get stuck, answers are easy to find. There’s a huge ecosystem around WordPress for almost any question or need.
Hugo vs WordPress: My Takeaway
| Feature | WordPress | Hugo |
|---|---|---|
| Writing & Editing | Very Easy | Needs Workflow |
| Theme Flexibility | Plug & Play | Not Easily Swapped |
| Maintenance | Minimal | Technical |
| Performance | Average | Excellent |
| Troubleshooting | Lots of Resources | Few Resources |
Conclusion
For developers like me, Hugo offers a rewarding technical playground, but that comes at the cost of smooth content creation. WordPress, on the other hand, is still hard to beat for anyone who wants to focus on writing and updating content rather than building the platform itself.
If your main motivation is actually publishing and sharing ideas, WordPress is still the path of least resistance, and that’s how I keep coming back to it.
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