5 ms·

I so wish I was code savvy enough to build a simple blog site on Hugo or one of the other SSGs. (sigh)

loloquwowndueo 5y ago
You don’t need to code to get started with Hugo. You just copy some template files around, write your pages using any text editor in the very simple markdown format, run Hugo in the command line, and get html files ready to upload. None of this is actually “code”.
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  I'm ridiculously noob with all this. Trying to teach myself. I don't even know what a "command line"is. It's a wonder that I keep up with anything at all on here!(though I'm trying).
  - lhuser123 5y ago
    > what a “command line” is. That’s exactly the question I would search in google to get started. Then when another question pop up in my mind, I would also google it. Keep doing that until you start building a better mental model & before you know it, You are reading tutorials & getting started. At least that how I do it.
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      I was teaching myself about Git today, and it's hilarious the Google threads I develop. "Git is a Distributed Concurrent Versions System." OK what's a "Distributed Concurrent Versions System"? Hmmm OK what's a "Concurrent Versions System?" hmm OK what's a "Version system?" googling is helpful af, but at some point I need a human interaction for real time questions. Slowly but surely.
  - davchana 5y ago
    https://gitlab.com/pages https://gitlab.com/pages Follow this extremely simple guide & project for a basic free ssg site. I use plain html & Jekyll, two different ones. I have no experience except simple html, css, js & markdown.
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      Thanks! I will try this. Sounds like we coming at it with similar skill sets. No js for me, but the others, yes.
  - rrampage 5y ago
    The Missing Semester of CS education by MIT ( https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ ) has a lot of great materials and videos to get started with basics of command line, shell, and git. It has been discussed previously on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226380 )
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      Really interesting. I'll check it out. First glance looks awesome.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    Command line is the black and white (usually) "hacker view" that you see in movies. All OSs have one easily accessible (even windows). Think of it as a text-only way of moving around and looking at directories/folders inside your computer - you start off in some directory and can move to other ones. In side each directory you can do really basic things like just list the files there, or rename them or move them etc. Just like you can in the GUI. Where the command line gets powerful is that as well as manipulating files you can run arbitrary "commands" - i.e. you can run programs like you can by double-clicking an icon - AND you can start to do smart stuff like sending the output of one command as the input to another. So you can do things like sort all of the lines in a text file in alphabetical order, remove duplicates, then count the number of lines with the command line in a couple of seconds, where as in the GUI you'd probably end up pasting the text file into a spreadsheet or something I guess. Look for "terminal" or "CMD" in Linux/osx or Windows and have a poke around by moving through directories and listing files etc, checking against the GUI as you go. Eventually you'll get an intuition for using it. Good luck!
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      Thanks so much. I've been thinking that Terminal on my Mac was gonna play a role in all this learning somehow. Maybe my next step will be to find some tutorials on how it works and for what purpose. Thanks for the Kickstart.
      - mattlondon 5y ago
        https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/getting-started-with-terminal https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/getting-started-with-terminal has some very basic stuff for mac terminal (n.b. these are also largely identical to linux too, so bonus!). No relation to the site, just found it from googling and looks to cover off the essentials. That will get you started getting comfortable moving around and doing things, but it doesn't go further than the absolute minimum. It will at least get you started and hopefully slightly comfortable if you need to use the terminal for anything else in the future as that is where the real learning comes from. E.g. following a tutorial and they say "type this in the command line" you are now at least a little familiar with it and can google the rest. Have fun.
rgoulter 5y ago
If you want to make a simple blog, what technology you use likely doesn't matter. But if instead you want to play around with SSGs, just go ahead and play with SSGs.
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  That is something I'm trying to do. But, teaching myself simultaneously. So, it can get confusing. :(
superkuh 5y ago
The complexity of of static site generator isn't always needed or useful. If you just want a simple site with a handful of posts a year then manually making .html files with an WYSIWYG editor or just copying old HTML/CSS templates from site likes "alistapart" is a legitimate, simple option. Installing nginx from your system repos is safe and easy too but if you don't want to self host then https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ is decent.
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  I write a lot! Have used Wordpress for almost a decade and a half. But, am trying to teach myself other ways of doing it all. It gets confusing for me very quickly. Though, I'm trying to teach myself.
  - tkgally 5y ago
    You might try going back to basics. First write some pages in plain HTML using a text editor to get a feel for how tags work. Then add some styling using CSS and play around with that. That’s about all I know how to do, but I’m able to maintain a personal website that meets my needs. Since the site has no dependencies, it will presumably be readable for decades to come. And it is extremely light (not that it gets many visitors!).
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      Thanks for the advice. I have a bit of html and css experience, but mostly from when I tried to customize WordPress over the years. So, I'm bmhetting better at recognizing what's what in the code (is that code?), but I get really tripped up with the "but where is it?" and "how does it get from my text doc or markdown out there online?"
miki_tyler 5y ago
Just don't use a CLI. There are multiple apps out there that would take your HTML and generate pages.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
Check out Publii. https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Ahh, I've been meaning to revisit this... cool.
chrsstrm 5y ago
I’ve taught several non-technical people how to use Hugo and many of them still use it to this day on their own. It’s totally achievable after you understand just a few key concepts and pick a well-formed template to start with. And yes, Hugo is your best bet to keep things easy.
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  Those key concepts are what I'm after. In every vid or article I'm learning from inevitably there's a point where I can see they pivot and lose me, and it's because I'm missing a key perspective or concept. I've yet to figure out what that actually is, which makes it hard to ask for advice! Cuz I don't have the question.
  - chrsstrm 5y ago
    Yeah it’s hard when you don’t know what you don’t know. Your best bet is to go one on one with someone who understands you’re starting from zero. Catching someone who understands that will make a huge difference. Tech in general is absolutely amazing at continually making assumptions in instructions and documentation and it irritates me to no end. A couple hours one on one with a good teacher will crack the case quickly.
    - taurusnoises 5y ago
      This has been my feeling all along. I think in every post I make I need to add that at the end (I'm starting from zero). Bc, understandably, people assume I know more than I do. And, yes. I need to find someone to give me a couple hours to help crack it open so I can better know what I don't know.
- snerbles 5y ago
  How do you go about teaching people that are outright hostile to the command line and anything that resembles code? Currently dealing with a snobbish painter/graphic designer who has used Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Muse for over 20 years and just wants their GUI WYSIWYG back.
tomcam 5y ago
I wrote this for people like you https://tomcam.github.io/least-github-pages/ https://tomcam.github.io/least-github-pages/
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  Saved, and will read tomorrow. Thanks!
cmod 5y ago
I would recommend poking around with 11ty,[0] which I find to be significantly simpler than Hugo. The Go templating of Hugo is extremely confusing for most non-Go people. After using it for years I still constantly look up how to do simple conditionals. 11ty is a very competent, "good enough" generator. We used it to build this site[1] for CERN back in 2019 from scratch over the course of a few days. [0]: https://www.11ty.dev/ https://www.11ty.dev/ [1]: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  Supposedly, Zola[0] was built in response to the deficiencies of Go templating. Having dipped my toe into the Go pool, I am tempted to agree. [0] https://www.getzola.org/ https://www.getzola.org/
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  Thanks, and nice job on the build :) I came across 11ty today. Looked interesting. But, the moment I see code blocks my brain shuts down. I try to stick it out, but it's difficult. Trying tho!
- Dauros 5y ago
  Yes, Go templating is quite hard. There was a feature request[1] to implement the Django/Jinja2-like Pongo2 template engine[2], but got rejected because it would have been a too big change. [1]: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/1359 https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/1359 [2]: https://github.com/flosch/pongo2 https://github.com/flosch/pongo2
  - olifante 5y ago
    Templates are the ugliest part of Django. They are completely unaware of the target syntax, so very often the template itself cannot be validated as HTML, which makes it difficult to lint or reformat. The only tool I'm aware of that can (mostly) correctly reformat Django templates is the PyCharm/IntelliJ family of IDEs, but their reformatting often introduces subtle breakage (such as adding new lines inside tag attributes) and requires careful review.

You don’t need to code to get started with Hugo. You just copy some template files around, write your pages using any text editor in the very simple markdown format, run Hugo in the command line, and get html files ready to upload. None of this is actually “code”.

taurusnoises 5y ago
I'm ridiculously noob with all this. Trying to teach myself. I don't even know what a "command line"is. It's a wonder that I keep up with anything at all on here!(though I'm trying).
- lhuser123 5y ago
  > what a “command line” is. That’s exactly the question I would search in google to get started. Then when another question pop up in my mind, I would also google it. Keep doing that until you start building a better mental model & before you know it, You are reading tutorials & getting started. At least that how I do it.
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    I was teaching myself about Git today, and it's hilarious the Google threads I develop. "Git is a Distributed Concurrent Versions System." OK what's a "Distributed Concurrent Versions System"? Hmmm OK what's a "Concurrent Versions System?" hmm OK what's a "Version system?" googling is helpful af, but at some point I need a human interaction for real time questions. Slowly but surely.
- davchana 5y ago
  https://gitlab.com/pages https://gitlab.com/pages Follow this extremely simple guide & project for a basic free ssg site. I use plain html & Jekyll, two different ones. I have no experience except simple html, css, js & markdown.
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    Thanks! I will try this. Sounds like we coming at it with similar skill sets. No js for me, but the others, yes.
- rrampage 5y ago
  The Missing Semester of CS education by MIT ( https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ ) has a lot of great materials and videos to get started with basics of command line, shell, and git. It has been discussed previously on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226380 )
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    Really interesting. I'll check it out. First glance looks awesome.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Command line is the black and white (usually) "hacker view" that you see in movies. All OSs have one easily accessible (even windows). Think of it as a text-only way of moving around and looking at directories/folders inside your computer - you start off in some directory and can move to other ones. In side each directory you can do really basic things like just list the files there, or rename them or move them etc. Just like you can in the GUI. Where the command line gets powerful is that as well as manipulating files you can run arbitrary "commands" - i.e. you can run programs like you can by double-clicking an icon - AND you can start to do smart stuff like sending the output of one command as the input to another. So you can do things like sort all of the lines in a text file in alphabetical order, remove duplicates, then count the number of lines with the command line in a couple of seconds, where as in the GUI you'd probably end up pasting the text file into a spreadsheet or something I guess. Look for "terminal" or "CMD" in Linux/osx or Windows and have a poke around by moving through directories and listing files etc, checking against the GUI as you go. Eventually you'll get an intuition for using it. Good luck!
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    Thanks so much. I've been thinking that Terminal on my Mac was gonna play a role in all this learning somehow. Maybe my next step will be to find some tutorials on how it works and for what purpose. Thanks for the Kickstart.
    - mattlondon 5y ago
      https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/getting-started-with-terminal https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/getting-started-with-terminal has some very basic stuff for mac terminal (n.b. these are also largely identical to linux too, so bonus!). No relation to the site, just found it from googling and looks to cover off the essentials. That will get you started getting comfortable moving around and doing things, but it doesn't go further than the absolute minimum. It will at least get you started and hopefully slightly comfortable if you need to use the terminal for anything else in the future as that is where the real learning comes from. E.g. following a tutorial and they say "type this in the command line" you are now at least a little familiar with it and can google the rest. Have fun.

rgoulter 5y ago

If you want to make a simple blog, what technology you use likely doesn't matter. But if instead you want to play around with SSGs, just go ahead and play with SSGs.

taurusnoises 5y ago
That is something I'm trying to do. But, teaching myself simultaneously. So, it can get confusing. :(

superkuh 5y ago

The complexity of of static site generator isn't always needed or useful. If you just want a simple site with a handful of posts a year then manually making .html files with an WYSIWYG editor or just copying old HTML/CSS templates from site likes "alistapart" is a legitimate, simple option. Installing nginx from your system repos is safe and easy too but if you don't want to self host then https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ is decent.

taurusnoises 5y ago
I write a lot! Have used Wordpress for almost a decade and a half. But, am trying to teach myself other ways of doing it all. It gets confusing for me very quickly. Though, I'm trying to teach myself.
- tkgally 5y ago
  You might try going back to basics. First write some pages in plain HTML using a text editor to get a feel for how tags work. Then add some styling using CSS and play around with that. That’s about all I know how to do, but I’m able to maintain a personal website that meets my needs. Since the site has no dependencies, it will presumably be readable for decades to come. And it is extremely light (not that it gets many visitors!).
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    Thanks for the advice. I have a bit of html and css experience, but mostly from when I tried to customize WordPress over the years. So, I'm bmhetting better at recognizing what's what in the code (is that code?), but I get really tripped up with the "but where is it?" and "how does it get from my text doc or markdown out there online?"

miki_tyler 5y ago

Just don't use a CLI. There are multiple apps out there that would take your HTML and generate pages.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

Check out Publii. https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Ahh, I've been meaning to revisit this... cool.

chrsstrm 5y ago

I’ve taught several non-technical people how to use Hugo and many of them still use it to this day on their own. It’s totally achievable after you understand just a few key concepts and pick a well-formed template to start with. And yes, Hugo is your best bet to keep things easy.

taurusnoises 5y ago
Those key concepts are what I'm after. In every vid or article I'm learning from inevitably there's a point where I can see they pivot and lose me, and it's because I'm missing a key perspective or concept. I've yet to figure out what that actually is, which makes it hard to ask for advice! Cuz I don't have the question.
- chrsstrm 5y ago
  Yeah it’s hard when you don’t know what you don’t know. Your best bet is to go one on one with someone who understands you’re starting from zero. Catching someone who understands that will make a huge difference. Tech in general is absolutely amazing at continually making assumptions in instructions and documentation and it irritates me to no end. A couple hours one on one with a good teacher will crack the case quickly.
  - taurusnoises 5y ago
    This has been my feeling all along. I think in every post I make I need to add that at the end (I'm starting from zero). Bc, understandably, people assume I know more than I do. And, yes. I need to find someone to give me a couple hours to help crack it open so I can better know what I don't know.
snerbles 5y ago
How do you go about teaching people that are outright hostile to the command line and anything that resembles code? Currently dealing with a snobbish painter/graphic designer who has used Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Muse for over 20 years and just wants their GUI WYSIWYG back.

tomcam 5y ago

I wrote this for people like you https://tomcam.github.io/least-github-pages/ https://tomcam.github.io/least-github-pages/

taurusnoises 5y ago
Saved, and will read tomorrow. Thanks!

cmod 5y ago

I would recommend poking around with 11ty,[0] which I find to be significantly simpler than Hugo. The Go templating of Hugo is extremely confusing for most non-Go people. After using it for years I still constantly look up how to do simple conditionals. 11ty is a very competent, "good enough" generator. We used it to build this site[1] for CERN back in 2019 from scratch over the course of a few days. [0]: https://www.11ty.dev/ https://www.11ty.dev/ [1]: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/

41b696ef1113 5y ago
Supposedly, Zola[0] was built in response to the deficiencies of Go templating. Having dipped my toe into the Go pool, I am tempted to agree. [0] https://www.getzola.org/ https://www.getzola.org/
taurusnoises 5y ago
Thanks, and nice job on the build :) I came across 11ty today. Looked interesting. But, the moment I see code blocks my brain shuts down. I try to stick it out, but it's difficult. Trying tho!
Dauros 5y ago
Yes, Go templating is quite hard. There was a feature request[1] to implement the Django/Jinja2-like Pongo2 template engine[2], but got rejected because it would have been a too big change. [1]: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/1359 https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/1359 [2]: https://github.com/flosch/pongo2 https://github.com/flosch/pongo2
- olifante 5y ago
  Templates are the ugliest part of Django. They are completely unaware of the target syntax, so very often the template itself cannot be validated as HTML, which makes it difficult to lint or reformat. The only tool I'm aware of that can (mostly) correctly reformat Django templates is the PyCharm/IntelliJ family of IDEs, but their reformatting often introduces subtle breakage (such as adding new lines inside tag attributes) and requires careful review.