How I built my first site: from Hugo to Zola
· 3 min read · Updated
Update, October 2026: my first site, kaggwemarvinvictor.me, no longer runs on Hugo. I rebuilt it with Zola and my own small template, the same one this site uses. The second half of this post explains why.
Building a personal site had been on my to-do list for ages. Working on the Ordin project finally pushed me to do it, because I needed a place to document my progress and show my work.
Version 1: Hugo and hugo-coder
I wanted a site that was:
- Fast: static pages load quickly, even on a slow connection
- Simple: little setup and little to maintain
- Flexible: easy to change later
- Developer-friendly: posts in Markdown, changes tracked in Git
Hugo met all four. Setup on Windows took a few commands:
winget install Hugo.Hugo.Extended
hugo new site resume
cd resume
git init
I picked the hugo-coder theme because it was clean, worked on phones and was still maintained. A GitHub Actions workflow built the site and published it to GitHub Pages on every push, so I could focus on writing instead of servers.
What I learned from version 1
- Themes are a package deal. A Hugo theme brings its own layouts, styles, scripts and settings. Changing one small thing often meant learning how all the others fit together.
- Simple wins. For a small personal site, I would choose simplicity every time.
- Ship early, then improve. The first version was basic, but it was live. That beat waiting for perfect.
Working on Ordin taught me the same lessons: documentation matters, and small steps beat big rewrites.
Version 2: Zola and my own template
A year later the site needed a real update. My CV had changed, I had new projects, and the theme carried a lot of code I did not use. So I rebuilt it:
- Zola instead of Hugo. Zola is one small program, and its templates are easy to read.
- My own template instead of a theme. Now every line of HTML and CSS is mine and does something.
- Content as data. My work history, projects and websites live in simple TOML lists. Updating my resume means editing a list, not HTML.
- Live downloads. The Downloads tab reads my latest GitHub releases in the browser, so a new release shows up without rebuilding the site.
The result loads faster, has light and dark modes, prints cleanly, and is easier for me to keep up to date.
What I would tell myself at the start
- Look past the screenshot when choosing a theme. Check how much code you are taking on, not just how it looks.
- Plan your content first. Decide what pages you need before choosing tools.
- Keep old links working. When I moved to Zola, I kept the old post addresses, so links people shared still open the right page.
The source code is on GitHub for both my first site and this one. Feel free to reach out if you have questions about static sites or web development.