Hugo

When I started my blog, I wanted a simple way to understand how people were finding and reading my posts. Where were my visitors coming from? Was anyone even visiting at all? I didn’t need anything complicated, just a way to see how my blog was doing. For that, I needed an analytics tool. Google Analytics is a popular choice, but there are reasons I didn’t want to use it. It loads additional JavaScript, which can affect page performance, and it collects data about website visitors. Depending on how it’s configured and which visitors you track, it can also create privacy and consent requirements, particularly for visitors from the EU. ...

I recently built my blog with Hugo and chose the PaperMod theme. It works well out of the box, but I’ve made a few tweaks to make it my own, such as replacing the “Search” menu text with an icon. Another thing I’ve tweaked is the font. By default, PaperMod uses the system font stack, which is a smart choice for website speed. The browser doesn’t need to make any external requests; it simply uses the fonts already available on your device. ...

If you don’t like the default “Search” text in your menu, you can replace it with an icon, just as many modern blogs do. You don’t need to edit any theme files; a small change to your site configuration is all it takes. Open hugo.yaml (or hugo.toml) and add a search entry to your main menu. hugo.yaml 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 menu: main: - identifier: search name: "" title: Search # keeps a tooltip and screen-reader label url: /search/ weight: 40 pre: '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="18" height="18" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" aria-hidden="true"><circle cx="11" cy="11" r="8"/><line x1="21" y1="21" x2="16.65" y2="16.65"/></svg>' hugo.toml ...