Playing with Hugo

So I’ve spent some time playing with Hugo and more specifically, I’ve been playing with ox-hugo which is a way of exporting Org files to Markdown that plays nicely with Hugo. I’m not happy with my current blog setup. I like the Sylvan site and NextJS, but blogging with it is cumbersome, in part because of the Org parser I am using. In JavaScript land there are two Org parsers, one is mostly abondonware and the other is called Uniorg. It’s great for what it is, but it’s not refined, it has a very poor way of interacting with it, it feels fragile, and the author has expressed disinterest in support rather common and crucial Orgmode features — such as multiple drawers in a document, non-PROPERTIES drawers (ie LOGBOOK), and subtrees.

In my opinion none of these are inherently a deal breaker, and all are things I could remedy by forking the project and building my own off of it. But, I’m not interested in spending a huge time on this and if I did, why limit myself to JavaScript? I see a few potential options:

  1. Use Hugo, it works out of the box and produces a very satisfactory website with nearly no fuss
  2. Fork Uniorg and add the myriad features I’d like to see
  3. Use another parser all together, such as this python parser, and then decide what to do about serving

Some things in ox-huge/hugo’s favor:

  • it just works
  • converting my stylings to hugo shouldn’t be too hard
  • ox-hugo supports a LOT of org features
  • files attached to org files are ported
  • it’s static

Some things that I’m a little concerned about:

  • No server means less cool things
  • No node means harder to do cool JS things

I might flip the switch and if I do, you’ll know…