How this site is made

I made a new website in 2026. My goals:

• Modern-looking
• Easy to maintain, minimal infrastructure
• Content lasts indefinitely even as web technologies come and go including the ones I use now

I decided on a static website ↗, with content in Markdown ↗ and a modest amount of templating. I chose the Hugo ↗ static site generator with the PaperMod ↗ theme. I use the web fonts Inter, Amiri, Noto Serif Devanagari and Source Han Serif CN (self-hosted, no Google Fonts tracking by calling googleapis).

I added custom templates, CSS ↗, Hugo shortcodes ↗ and JavaScript for colour palettes, timelines, handy infoboxes and other site-specific features. Hugo makes this quite easy to achieve while still using mostly standard markdown. That bodes well for being able to move to other systems as the years roll on.

I’ve used many templating systems over the years, including from before there were websites. If you think Hugo looks complicated, consider that the problem space is much harder than it looks at first, having a lot in common with writing a compiler. I only use a fraction of the features Hugo offers.