From WordPress to Hugo: My Setup Explained

Ten years ago, I started my first website projects—some for myself, others for friends or clients. I spent a lot of time experimenting with themes, plugins, and WordPress setups.

My Experience with WordPress

WordPress is a solid way to get started—especially if you’re messing around with your first LAMP server. But long term? It can be a pain. You’ll find yourself tweaking PHP configs, switching to LiteSpeed, juggling plugin updates, and basically fine-tuning everything so it doesn’t fall apart.

What I Liked

• Database-based structure
• Huge plugin ecosystem
• Easy integrations with third-party tools
• Pretty smooth for non-devs thanks to the admin dashboard

But Also…

• Every plugin is another potential vulnerability
• Too many resources for something like a static website
• Gets heavy fast (plugins + DB = bottleneck)
• Needs constant updates and babysitting

From my perspective, if you just want a simple presentation website, WordPress is overkill. You’re burning CPU cycles and adding surface area for no real reason.

E-commerce? Maybe. WooCommerce is fine—until it isn’t. Do your research. Shopify is probably the better call long-term.

Here’s a visual from wpscan.com showing the current number of known vulnerabilities:

Moving to Hugo

For over 6 months now, I’ve been all-in on Hugo—my current site merox.dev runs entirely on it. I had totally underestimated the power of a static site. Hugo’s written in Go, builds super fast, and is already SEO-optimized out of the box.

I chose Blowfish as the theme and tweaked it over time to fit my needs.

Hugo Pros

• Static = zero backend vuln headaches
• Hosting? Free, thanks to GitHub Pages
• Markdown = clean, portable, fast to edit
• Insanely fast loading
• Version control with Git, so I always know what’s changing

Hugo Cons

• You need to be a bit technical
• No dashboard—everything’s in Markdown
• Some DevOps skills help if you want a clean, automated setup

Setting Up Hugo + Blowfish

1. Install Hugo: https://gohugo.io/installation/
2. Add Blowfish theme: https://blowfish.page/docs/installation/
3. Use blowfish-tools for live previews—it’s a nice touch

To keep the theme up to date without breaking my customizations, I forked Blowfish and added it as a Git submodule like this:

git submodule add https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/blowfish themes/blowfish

This way, I can track upstream updates while maintaining my own style.

Connecting Domain via GitHub Pages + Cloudflare

After installing Hugo + Blowfish, I decided to host my site using GitHub Pages and manage DNS via Cloudflare.

Here’s a quick guide:

1. Push Hugo project to a private repo
2. Enable GitHub Pages on a public repo (choose branch: gh-pages, folder: /)
3. In Cloudflare:
   • Add a CNAME for www.yourdomain.com → yourusername.github.io
   • Add A records pointing to GitHub Pages IPs if needed
4. Add a CNAME file in your repo containing:

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   merox.dev

Wait for DNS to propagate and you’re done.

Automating Deploys with GitHub Actions

I’m not about that manual deploy life. So I set up GitHub Actions to take care of builds and deploys whenever I push to master.

My workflow? Make changes in VS Code → push to private repo → GitHub Actions builds → deploys to public repo.

Connecting Private + Public Repo Using RSA

I didn’t want my source repo to be public. So here’s how I did the private → public deploy using RSA keys:

SSH Deploy Setup

1. Generate an RSA key pair:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "github-deploy" -f deploy_key -N ""

2. Public repo (destination):

   • Go to Settings → Deploy Keys → Add deploy_key.pub with write access

3. Private repo (source):

   • Settings → Secrets → Add PRIVATE_KEY → paste the private key contents

4. My .github/workflows/deploy.yml:

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name: github pages
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on:
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  push:
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    branches:
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      - master
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permissions:
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  contents: write
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  id-token: write
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jobs:
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  deploy:
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    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
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    steps:
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      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
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        with:
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          submodules: true
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          fetch-depth: 0
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      - name: Setup Hugo
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        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v3
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        with:
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          hugo-version: 'latest'
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          extended: true
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      - name: Build
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        run: hugo --minify
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      - name: Deploy
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        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
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        with:
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          deploy_key: ${{ secrets.PRIVATE_KEY }}
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          external_repository: meroxdotdev/merox.dev
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          publish_branch: gh-pages
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          publish_dir: ./public

SEO Results After the Switch

I didn’t even have to do much SEO magic — Hugo just works. With clean structure and no bloat, I got over 80% SEO scores right away. That’s the beauty of static sites done right.

From https://freetools.seobility.net/

From https://seositecheckup.com/

Final Thoughts

No more updates every week. No plugin bugs. No servers to worry about. And I finally get a blazing-fast site, version-controlled, with everything set up exactly how I want.

If you’re into the idea of a static site and want help setting one up—or just have questions—drop me an email or comment. Happy to help.