Definitely agree with the sentiment of plain HTML+CSS being best for static blogs, but I've found value in using a static site generator for any "production" HT

Definitely agree with the sentiment of plain HTML+CSS being best for static blogs, but I've found value in using a static site generator for any "production" HTML site where the small overhead of a tool is justified because it provides some minor quality-of-life features. A few things that I've encountered in the past that Hugo solves: - Page links breaking and requiring rework if you change your site layout. - Standardizing link formatting, including trailing slashes. - Editing headers/footers. - Dynamically deploying separate development & production environments, so teams can preview changes before releasing. - "Draft" mode, to turn on/off pages without moving or deleting the file. All of these things you could do by hand, but having them handled automatically makes it less likely that you'll make a mistake. That said, the way I've used Hugo on several projects is pretty similar to your philosophy: Most of the content (index page, styles) is hand-written HTML/CSS, and Hugo is just used to format generic pages and links.