If you’re a student or a busy professional running a WordPress site, you’ve likely felt the “WordPress Tax.” Between paying for hosting, managing database updates, and dodging constant security patches, it’s a lot of overhead for a simple blog.
As a student with a packed schedule, I realized my WordPress setup was total overkill. I was paying yearly fees for a site I barely had time to maintain. I needed something cheaper (read: free), faster, and infinitely simpler.
Here is how I migrated from WordPress to a static site, why I chose Hugo over Astro, and how I kept my SEO visibility intact.
The Problem: The High Cost of “Free” WordPress
Wordpress is a powerhouse, but for a personal blog, it comes with baggage:
- Cost: Reliable hosting isn’t free, and the “busy student” budget doesn’t always have room for it.
- Maintenance: Plugins and themes need constant babysitting to stay secure.
- Performance: Dynamic sites are naturally slower than static ones because they require a database handshake every time a page loads.
My goal was to move to a frontend-only architecture. Platforms like Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages offer incredibly free tiers for static sites. After looking at the limits, I settled on Cloudflare Pages because of their generous stance towards static content deployment and seamless integration with my domain.
The Contenders: Astro vs. Hugo
Since I’m experienced with React frameworks like Next.js, that was my first thought. However, I quickly realized it was another “overkill” situation. I wasn’t a fan of Next.js SSR (Server-Side Rendering) for this use case, and I wanted to avoid the deployment limits often associated with complex frameworks.
This narrowed my research down to two active projects: Astro and Hugo.
1. The Astro Attempt
Astro is the “new kid on the block” and it’s incredibly fast. I actually tried implementing my site in Astro first. It fulfilled almost every requirement, but I ran into a major technical headache with image management.
The migration tool I used co-located images with the Markdown files in the content directory. Astro’s build system struggled to handle these images across both the local development server and the production build on Cloudflare. I could only configure it in a way where thumbnails would show up either on the dev server or on deployed Cloudflare Pages, but not both. For a “simple” migration, this was a nuisance I didn’t want to fight.
2. Why Hugo Won
Hugo is a veteran in the static site world, built on Go. It handled my migrated content perfectly, but what really sold me were the robust “out-of-the-box” features that handled all my SEO and technical needs:
Native Image Processing: Hugo automatically handled my images, allowing for easy conversion to WebP for better compression and SEO.
Automatic SEO Assets: It generates Sitemaps and RSS feeds automatically without extra configuration.
Pagination & Highlighting: It includes native Markdown highlighting (syntax highlighting) for code snippets and robust pagination that just works.
Total Flexibility: Hugo is as flexible as it gets. It handles “Page Bundles” (images and Markdown in the same folder) natively, ensuring images work in both dev and production.
Hugo allowed me to export everything, including homepages and custom archives, into pure static files that load almost instantly.
The Migration Process (Preserving SEO)
The biggest fear when leaving WordPress is losing your search engine rankings. Here is how I ensured a smooth transition:
1. Exporting Content to Markdown
I found a lifesaver tool: wordpress-export-to-markdown. This tool is amazing because it doesn’t require a database export. It uses your WordPress XML export file and converts everything into clean Markdown files, preserving your images and metadata.
2. Maintaining Permalinks
To keep my SEO visibility, my URLs had to stay exactly the same.
Wordpress:
nepcodex.com/2024/01/my-postHugo: I configured the permalinks section in my configuration file
hugo.tomlto match the structure exactly. This meant no 404 errors for Google’s crawlers and no loss in “link juice.”
# hugo.toml
[permalinks]
posts = '/:year/:month/:contentbasename/'
categories = '/category/:slug/'
tags = '/tag/:slug/'
Final Thoughts: Astro or Hugo?
If you are looking to leave WordPress, both are fantastic options, but your choice depends on your specific needs:
| Feature | Astro | Hugo |
|---|---|---|
| Learning Curve | Easy (if you know JS/React) | Moderate (Go Templates) |
| Build Speed | Fast | Instant |
| Image Handling | Can be tricky with co-location | Native & Robust (WebP support) |
| SEO Features | Custom/Library based | Built-in Sitemaps, RSS, Pagination |
For me, Hugo was the clear winner for stability and flexibility. It allowed me to maintain a professional, SEO-friendly blog with zero monthly costs and zero maintenance stress. My student life is busy enough; my blog shouldn’t make it busier.
