CODEWITHSUNDEEP
hugostatic-site
Zarul Zakuan
Zarul Zakuan

Reputation: 520

Generate static websites dynamically using Hugo

I'm building a static website hosting and would like to generate default web pages for my users and would like to use Hugo for this. Question is, what would be the best way to dynamically generate web pages for multiple users? This is my thought so far:

  1. User fills up form for their website content e.g., photos, title, product descriptions, etc.
  2. Pass to backend (I'm using Perl's Mojolicious) and create markdown files based on the provided information and save them in a designated folder created for this user
  3. Run Hugo to build using those md files and move the public folder to user's root directory

This doesn't look right to me as there will be contention of multiple users to run Hugo and I'm thinking that it is much easier if I can just create the html files directly from backend instead of creating md files and then run Hugo to create the html files. Is there any better and smarter way?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1067

Answers (1)

Alex
Alex

Reputation: 173

If I am not mistaken, it seems you want to make a WordPress portal alike or something similar, going from Markdown plus theme down to HTMl/CSS/JavaScript content. The end-users edit the content in Markdown, choose the theme and the rest will be taken care of.

IMHO, there might be two ways:

(1) Using Hugo at the back-end and taking care of the destination folders and generated artifacts as well as mapping generated links to the front-end corresponding to your particular end-user's hosting. You can create a Hugo wrapper in which the input will be fed to Hugo and the generated pages will be in the public folder. In this way, you have to rely on an external tool (read Hugo) and wish for a long-term support version like many other systems (e.g. Ubuntu, Java, Windows).

(2) Creating a similar generator like Hugo or another (c.f. StaticGen for more generators on different languages). You may need the core of a Markdown based static site generator, for instance, a Markdown parser, link translators and generators, etc. With extra effort, you might have more control of every smaller component/library that you use, can configure the generated artifacts, their destinations, etc.

A side note: Markdown is a not-so-bad choice for content. Even WordPress have offered support for Markdown. Nonetheless, Markdown itself is not standardized but rather de facto. There are so many flavours. You might want to look up to or stick with a good one, for example, CommonMark.

Upvotes: 1

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