Goodbye, HugoBlox (and Hugo)! Hello, Zola!

As of April 2026, I have updated my website after having waited for years for a better alternative to what I had been using. Here are my thoughts on the transition.

What happened?#

I have been using Hugo as the static site generator (SSG) for my website since late 2018. I had started with the Hugo Academic theme, which was later renamed Wowchemy and eventually to HugoBlox. Initially, the Hugo Academic theme was great but with the theme's evolution, every major update to the theme as well as Hugo, itself, brought about breaking changes.

In April 2026, I found out about Zola, a static site generator written in Rust, and decided to switch to it. I quote the creator of Zola, below, which somewhat resonates with my frustrations with Hugo and HugoBlox.

This tool and its template engine tera were born from an intense dislike of the (insane) Golang template engine and therefore of Hugo that I was using before for 6+ sites.

Zola and the terminus theme#

Given how frustrating my experience with Hugo had turned out to be, I decided to give Zola a try. However, Zola's theme ecosystem is not as mature as Hugo's yet and I could not find a theme that quite replicates the look and feel of the academic profile theme of Hugo. Hence, I ventured into a different direction -- using the terminus theme for a minimalistic and clean look. I have somewhat customized the theme to suit my needs.

The future#

So far, so good but it is too early to tell how Zola or compatible themes evolve over time. Let's see how it unfolds.