[SSG] Some Updates and Future Tutorial?
So, how’s it going with my self-learning myself how to build Hugo-powered sites? Just to make the story short, I gave up on the Udemy course for installing and building a Hugo-powered site for a long time. The building and deploying wasn’t the problem, but the automation system that the course used (Travis CI) itself. The course was created some years ago and Travis CI used to be free at that time. But times change and needs also change, and Travis CI was no longer a free product. There is a 30-day trial available, but how can you build, rebuild, and redeploy your updates for only 30 days? Would you have to uninstall and re-install the free trial again? Too much hassle. And unfortunately, the course hasn’t been updated since it first launched, so those who are taking it for the sake of learning how to build Hugo (and Jekyll) sites are completely stuck and lost. At least in my case, I can just google to find other solutions1, but on the other hand, I don’t mind using the CLI anytime that I update my Hugo site,2 however a CI/CD tool like Travis CI or GitHub Actions would be very useful if I were going to host my Hugo site out in the cloud.
That’s it for my quick intro of this post. There’s other things that I want to write here, so here we go.
It’s 2022, baby! New year, new beginnings!
One of my listed goals for 2022, especially now that I got a full-time job, is to refresh every aspect of my room, most especially my beloved desk. Two things I’ve accomplished so far. I finally was able to afford a Cricut cutting machine for my upcoming handmade projects involving my art. I haven’t started using Cricut yet because I still need to find a place for it and I still have yet to make original artwork that I can make stickers/decals out of as a test run. But I should be talking about this Cricut bit in my [art/stories blog[(https://adrimars.ink). Poor site needs some updating.
However, coding/online learning-wise, my biggest update (in a way) is finally getting a second monitor for my laptop (both for my MacPro and for my Dell Inspiron):
It’s super compact, it fits my MacPro (13" – my Dell Inspiron is a little larger at 15") so perfectly, and at first, I stumbled a bit with the connection, but it turned out that I’ve been connecting the cable at the wrong plugs. While I’m still waiting for my upcoming pre- enrollment interview appointment3. The second monitor would seriously help me with my code learning journeys. I’ll be watching my course videos on the second monitor while I do my coding work on the main screen. Before, I used my iPad as my "secondary monitor," but because my MacPro is a very old model4 that I couldn’t make my iPad a secondary screen and I had to save up some more for a secondary monitor. Luckily, portable second monitors such as this one came to existence. I’ve seen my former manager (from my previous part-time job) use it when she does her managerial work online and do her online Zoom conference meetings with colleagues, it’s so dang cool!
As I write right now, I’m using the secondary monitor for blogging with the Firefox Dev Edition browser. I had to adjust the settings so it would be wide enough to see everything. The problem is, I have to keep my windows on adjustable window screen rather than maximizing them to full screen. The left edge is covered, so I couldn’t see the menus on the left edge. Seeing that I’m right-handed, no way I can move everything from the left to the right. Plus, this is an extender screen and not the mirrored screen. Now I’m pretty set.
Looking forward to all the productivity that I can do with this secondary monitor and I hope I can find myself a lot more productive this year than I was in the previous years.
It’s 2022 – new year, new beginnings.
Back to Hugo
So, in general, I think I’ve finally gotten a grasp on how to make a Hugo-powered site. In fact, I already uploaded a super-simple sample of it and just uploaded it in my web server here. I couldn’t believe how easy it was, but I still need to grasp its flexibility. That’ll be much later in the future.
There are so many Hugo tutorials around the net that I’ve taken advantage of following each of them. I actually thought that I didn’t have a choice but to cancel my web server and make my major move to cloud hosting5 but all I did was just upload everything from the generated public folder.
And speaking of tutorials, I thought about creating my own tutorial (for my own personal reference) about setting up and creating a Hugo-powered static site generator. I really look forward to rebuilding my portfolio with Hugo in mind. Once I get used to it, maybe I can check out the other three I’ve been looking into: Pelican (python), Sculpin (PHP), and Gatsby (Javascript). I think I’ll aim for Gatsby next, since it’s been created using Javascript. More on this later.
Right now, I’m still busy getting myself enrolled in this bootcamp that I signed up for, therefore I won’t be making some major projects just yet.
Till next time!
Some Extra Notes...
- Github Actions
- I’m hosting it on my current web host anyway, not somewhere on the cloud like Netlify or GitHub Pages…
- It was moved to first Wednesday of February, since my mom wanted to go shopping around the day I was going to have my Zoom interview with
- This model will be forever stuck with Big Sur, since the latest iOS, Monterey, isn’t compatible with this old model anymore. I guess it’s a sign that I need to upgrade somehow?
- which I’m still not familiar with, which is why I’m still sticking to web hosting instead…