What Is Hugo?: A Guide to the World’s Fastest Framework for Building Websites

Setting up a website is one of the easiest ways to attract international clientele, drive sales to your company, and ensure that your business is as credible as possible. Considering the incredible $4.9 trillion USD 2021 total market value of eCommerce, it’s clear that online business has grown into a force that cannot be ignored.

However, 57% of users won’t recommend a business they come across if it is hard to navigate, and 38% won’t engage if the content is unattractive, so any old website won’t do. Instead, you need to prepare your business with an advanced solution that ensures your website looks the part.

Creating a beautiful website that’s neatly organized and contains a great flow for your customers is much easier said than done. However, with the rising need for a website, many solutions have sprung up that will help tackle this knowledge barrier. 

In fact, this article is dedicated to one of these solutions, helping you make the very most of your online website. We’ll be covering the following: 

• What is Hugo?
• What is the difference between gohugo.io and hugo.team? 
• What are static site generators?
• Key features that sets Hugo apart from other static site generators
• How to install Hugo
  

Let’s get started. 

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What is Hugo?

Hugo is one of the leading static site generators currently on the market, acting as a quick solution to design original websites. Within Hugo, a user is able to automatically build and update pages whenever they publish content. It aims to provide an optimal viewing experience for end-users and an ideal writing experience for website authors.

This static site generator will build websites incredibly quickly, producing secure environments. They can be hosted anywhere, making them a versatile option for users to try out. Technically speaking, Hugo takes a directory of templates and files, then uses these as an input through which they compile and create an entire website.

Anyone building a blog, landing page, or website with thousands of individual pages should see Hugo as a rapid solution.

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What is the difference between gohugo.io and hugo.team? 

Before we dive deeper into the features of Hugo, you may be wondering, which Hugo is which? 

To clarify, the website you’re currently reading this article on is designated for hugo.team. Our Hugo is a meeting productivity tool that integrates more than 20 popular work applications like Asana, Slack, Zoom, and Salesforce to help manage everything you use in the office, in one place. 

With Hugo, you’ll be able to access your calendar, take meeting notes, manage action items or tasks, and access meeting agenda templates curated by industry professionals. Hugo aims to streamline your meeting prep and help you and your team be more organized, productive, and aligned. 

On the other hand, go.hugo.io is the static site generator that you’re reading about in this article. As we continue, we’ll be dissecting the benefits and key features of this application, and how it sets itself apart from other site generators in the market. 

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What are static site generators?

A static site generator is an application that helps to create pages online, pulling from a content source in order to format and publish them. While leading website management platforms like Drupal and WordPress are database-driven content management systems, a static site generator acts as an alternative.

Instead of storing all the website information on a database, it is generated during the build time for a page. All the data is merged and compiled to produce the webpage when it is called upon. The connection between the server and this process of site development allows any page to materialize instantly. 

Typically, static site generators are much faster than database generators. Additionally, as you don’t need to host a database, you’ll be able to avoid any fees that are commonly associated with building websites and paying for backups. 

Static site generators make the framework for building websites much more simple, helping users to launch a new site as quickly as they need to.

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What key features of Hugo sets it apart from other static site generators? 

While a website builder isn’t a particularly new concept, the features that Hugo offers make it very unique. Each of these main features is targeted at supporting the user, making their experience as smooth as possible. Whether you’re a website whiz or are just getting started, you’ll be able to build a site with ease.

There are several key features that make Hugo stand out. We’ll be covering:

• Speed and creation times
• Management tools
• Shortcodes
• Custom outputs
• Linguistic support
• Templates
• Showcases
  

Let’s break these down further.

Speed

Part of what makes users see value in Hugo is that it can create websites incredibly quickly. Clocking in at around <1ms per page, this creation tool allows anyone to make a website in less than a second, making sure you have everything you want ready to go.

The days of having to wait for your website to build are over.

Management tools

When creating a website, there is a huge range of different taxonomies, dynamic API-driven content, and content types that you need to plan for. However, with Hugo, you’ll be able to support all of these without needing to reconfigure or download additional plugins.

If you’re planning content, you don’t have to worry about format, using the flexible management tools to make sure absolutely everything is included in your site correctly.

Shortcodes

If you’re an online content creator, you’ll understand how useful markdown can be. While the syntax of standard markdown is simple and effective, a lot of the time, it lacks the needed flexibility that website creators desire.

With Hugo, you’ll be able to use shortcodes that are effective, succinct, aesthetically pleasing, and, most of all, flexible. This combination will allow you to rapidly assemble all the content you want on your site.

Custom outputs

Instead of relying entirely on HTML, Hugo will allow you to output your content into a wide variety of different formats. Even formats like JSON and AMP are included, allowing your content management systems to become a breeze when building websites.

Linguistic support

In our modern age, people from all over the globe are routinely going to be accessing your website. Due to this, having a site that’s built solely in one language is never enough. Not only does focusing on one language cause your website to lack functionality, but it also instantly shuts out an international market that you have access to.

Hugo supports and provides a full i18n system, allowing you to create a multi-language site without the complexities. Instead of having to reconfigure your site to accommodate these other languages, you’ll be able to use Hugo’s features to instantly make your site polyglot friendly.

Templates

Although you’re creating a website, that doesn’t mean you’re a creative genius. Knowing this, Hugo has created a range of pre-made templates that you’ll be able to access. Taking this a step further, you’ll also be able to access SEO-friendly templates, take care of the nitty gritty, and ensure that after you install Hugo, you’ll be ready to go.

Within these templates, you’ll get access to analytics, powerful in-site functions, and commenting. All you need to do is select the template that you want to use, type in the associated code, and you’ll be well on your way to the website of your dreams.

Showcases

There’s a lot you can do with the Hugo platform. To demonstrate the different windows, article pages, and news sites that you can create, they’ve put together a range of different showcases for you to browse. In this directory, you’ll be able to take a look through some other projects that have been created on Hugo.

Additionally, the new Hugo site is filled with different themes that you can browse, seeing what a static site can look like when compiled at this level. With new builds being released every day by the Hugo community, this tool is only becoming more powerful over time.

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How to install Hugo

Downloading Hugo is a breeze and will only take you a matter of minutes. As Hugo is written in Go, it has in-built support across a wide variety of platforms. With this, you’ll be able to install Hugo with just the tap of a button on:

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux
• OpenBSD
• FreeBSD
  

Equally, a user can directly download Hugo to any system that supports the Go toolchain. From Solaris and Plan 9 to DragonFly BSD, Hugo has compatibility with it all.

To download Hugo, you’ll want to navigate to the Hugo releases page, where all of the most recent updates are launched. As this is an open-source program, you’ll be downloading the binary, instead of an actual platform right off the bat. You can run this binary from anywhere you’d like.

Once you’ve downloaded a recent release, install it directly within your PATH. Typically, users will place it on /usr/local/bin. Additionally, if you have a support system on your computer, like Homebrew, MacPorts, Chocolatey, or Scoop, you’ll also be able to download Hugo by typing in the associated one liner. 

You can find more details about exactly what you’ll need to type into your program here. You’ll be able to install Hugo in just a few minutes after using these steps.

Build your next static site with ease

Hugo is the world’s fastest framework, acting as a static site generator that will help publish anything from a content folder or blog post, to a data folder and markdown files. As it is an open-source project, Hugo helps generate and install everything you need to create a website — from a template to new content — with ease.

Take advantage of the fastest framework for building websites, using Hugo’s static site generator to instantly create your site. With this open-source community, Hugo users are continuously working on the project, developing Hugo templates and actions that you can access. 

If you’re looking to create multiple pages at once and automate the site generation process, turning to Hugo will be a fantastic option for you. 

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