Hugo on Vercel

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0200

As an attempt to diversify, I have been using Vercel to build and host this website since its inception, as opposed to going with the more common choice of Netlify.

After being pleasantly surprised with the initial setup-and-first-build flow (the automatic HTTPS on custom domains is awesome), I stumbled upon something that baffled me: the default Hugo version Vercel uses to build your site dates from September 2019, and you have to jump through hoops to find out about it.

Getting the version of Hugo used to build your site

This came out due to the many discrepancies I was seeing between my local dev version (using the latest and shiniest v0.82.1) and the deployed site. It took me a couple of weeks before I realized that Vercel was not using the latest stable version as I was naïvely thinking, but was in fact using version… 0.58.2 from 2019-09-13!! 😨

In order to get this basic information, you need to change the build command to something like:

hugo version && hugo -D --gc

I’d hope Vercel would make this the default build command, as this undocumented^[1][2] peculiarity made my first blog-and-deploy experience far more annoying than it ought to be.

I really don’t understand why they’d use such an outdated version, without even so much as a warning. Quite some things happened in Hugo-land since the somewhat “dramatic” changes in v0.60, which may have prompted this version pinning.

Tip

If someone at Vercel reads this, please either use the latest version by default or include the one you are using in your Docs and offer a way to specify a “latest” as the HUGO_VERSION environment variable.

Blogging from a smartphone for tech-savvy people

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0100

In this post we will see how to create and publish a blog using a smartphone, all the while flexing some serious tech chops.

Requirements:

a smartphone running Android
the Termux app with git and hugo installed (pkg install git hugo) and properly configured to access the local storage
a git client (Play store link) like the older but quite functional Forker app for easy graphical interactions with git (commit, push…): especially useful on the long run for a smoother publishing experience, but you may also exclusively use the command line for increased hacker-cred
a text editor: I strongly recommend MiXplorer (free on XDA Labs or support version in the Play Store), which provides editors suitable for both code and text and is an amazing file explorer all around; Markor is a good second choice
accounts on compatible git hosting and CDN deployment services (I’ll be using GitLab and Vercel): although the CDN part is optional, it provides some nice benefits and a smoother experience overall than e.g. GitHub/GitLab Pages
a mobile browser (I recommend Firefox for Android) and of course… Internet access 😁

Instructions:

create a new empty project on GitLab and clone it in Termux/Forker (tip: use the HTTPS URL in Termux to avoid having to install and setup openssh)
in Termux, cd to the repo folder (~/storage/shared/Android/data/ch.phcoder.jigit/files/repo/*name* if using Forker) and run hugo create site . -f in it
follow Hugo Quick Start Guide to add a theme and some content to your site
check that everything is working as intended by running hugo server -D and opening http://localhost:1313 in your browser
then commit and push your site to GitLab through Termux/Forker
now follow the official Vercel guide for deploying a Hugo site
finally, enjoy your new blog created on your smartphone and available worldwide! 👍

Going further:

customize your site to suit your needs
set up a custom domain and enjoy the automatic HTTPS (really smoothly done by Vercel) to be a good netizen

Now whenever you want to add some content to your blog, just create a new post in the proper folder either using hugo new posts/post_title in Termux or directly via your text editor, commit and push your changes and your updated site will be automagically deployed. You are officially equipped to blog on the go while roaming the vast world! Great success✌