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From WordPress to Hugo — because of (and thanks to) AI
I have had a project on my to-do list for months now — to move my blog from WordPress to Hugo. Part of it was just the novelty of a new system, tinkering for the sake of tinkering. Part of it was to have a faster, more secure site. And watching endless videos about how Obsidian as a second brain is the best thing since sliced bread!
All of these factors were nudging me towards the project, but any time I sat down to look at it and try it out, I just felt overwhelmed by the scale of it.
- Trying to keep URLs intact for SEO.
- Writing a post is not as WYSIWYG as in WordPress.
- How should I publish the site?
- Do I have to learn Git and GitHub Actions?
- How do I get search to work?
Every time, the friction was just too much, and I left another half-finished migration folder on my computer. Four attempts, and I gave up on each one.
However, this week we saw AI help uncover two fairly major flaws in PHP (opens in a new tab) (the language that WordPress is written in, along with about 70% of all websites!). The patches came out pretty quickly, and updating was reasonably straightforward for me. But it was just another little nudge to look at moving away from WordPress.
