eXplorer web corner

Hugo and Emacs/org-mode

why such setup?

Simply because keeping up alive a pure HTML/CSS website with no JS as I like it's simply too time consuming for me. Writing org-mode is a daily thing, it's quick and a static website is what I'm looking for. That's is.

In technical terms is obscene, at least there is a gazillion of modern stuff I do not like, write a theme it's time consuming not less than write a classical pure HTML+CSS website, and so on. But there is something pre-made witch is circa enough for not much important stuff, like my personal website.

Long story short: is the simplest solution I found to quickly write something like a blog, a low importance personal website to publish stuff my way instead on someone else platform. While I do host my site, not at home, simply because is something I do not care much and the web hosting is part of my domain and mail service, with this setup I still have anything on my iron. A migration is just migrating the domain name and push the locally generated website. Nothing more.

tools of the trade

Hugo is the web part, meaning an html/css/js generator from something easier to write than pure HTML+CSS+*, like org-mode files. It's written in Go and use a gazillion of stuff, like unfortunately much modern software (Node.js in the list), but these days doing anything the good classic way is reasonable only for high-value low rate of change stuff, not for marginal things.

Emacs is essentially my "operating environment", non an OS simply because it's complex to boot it directly lacking a kernel and a basic userland, however I still boot in Emacs/EXWM using NixOS (I'd love using Guix System but it's simply not enough developed for desktop usages IMO) configured directly in Emacs/org-mode. So well, it's the modern (since 50+ years) tool to enable human-computer interaction.

Finally org-mode, a SIMPLE and INTUITIVE markup language, rendered in-place (instead of most modern MD crapps) with a gazillion functionalities. For Hugo stuff is not much, but it's familiar and I can easy export articles with org to LaTeX and have all simply at hand in an environment already set up for doing all other my computer stuff.

conclusion

If you look for something to quickly made personal website that's my choice so far, the manual way prove to be too time-consuming so… I recommend it while alerting that doing custom and nice things demand studying a not that documented project and writing a personal theme since most available themes appear to be written quickly to produce nice-looking stuff but nothing more, not much documented, not much flexible and so on. Like ANY modern software.

If you look for a tool to manage information, a WM, a desktop system, well Emacs + org-mode is definitively the solution I recommend, even if demand much initial effort. I'll post few notes about how I use them and probably few comprehensive articles in the future.