Comment by SwellJoe
6 hours ago
I use Hugo published to Github Pages for my blog. I've never thought about performance (it's Fast Enough™ when I visit it), but I just checked and it's 100 on pagespeed. The magic of a static HTML blog is you don't have to think about performance. An entire category of problem just disappears.
I use Hugo as well. If any of your pages have larger media, look into Pipes to get images ladder srcsets built for you automatically. Very fancy. https://gohugo.io/hugo-pipes/introduction/
What’s an image ladder src set?
An “image ladder” is the same image resampled at several widths. It’s not a standard term; MDN calls the technique “resolution switching”.
A srcset lists those versions, and the browser picks the one that fits the current viewport and screen density. https://responsiveimages.org/ has details.
For an example, view the source of https://photostructure.com/tags/. All the header art looks like this:
<picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_f9b8e901c6d3512c.webp 400w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_4e2d65cccd03c969.webp 800w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_11f3bf6c90dbf78d.webp 1200w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_8c1a7d0a013e4ee2.webp 1600w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_4cebe999e55b5486.webp 2000w" sizes="100vw"><source type="image/jpeg" srcset="/img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_cf5671a2e3bdd0cc.jpg 400w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_2906e4ba7cda040.jpg 800w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_f59ef0388799d4d2.jpg 1200w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_e183d28df837e14a.jpg 1600w, /img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_ea9c422963c8e0e1.jpg 2000w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/img/2026/05/desk-2000w_hu_f59ef0388799d4d2.jpg" width="1200" height="600" alt="About" class="w-100 header-image" loading="eager"></picture>
That’s generated by https://gist.github.com/mceachen/d5915e46d1294489698e155eb11..., which uses Hugo’s resources.Get and .Resize.
Same we moved from Wordpress to Hugo when looking to update our company site page. Using AI to update the legacy Wordpress theme just wasn’t it. Had updated brand and style guide, Claude made short work of porting to Hugo and Google speed rankings were excellent even without cdn etc
Hugo is great. I had Claude make the framework for my wifes site using Hugo, Netlify free tier, and Decap CMS. And I forced Claude to avoid any Javascript for the non CMS parts.