Initially, I built my website with Hugo, but I’ve decided to switch to Zine.

Hugo

To create a Hugo website, you should write YAML. This sentence has definitely dropped a non negligible amount of people.

I have these lines in the yaml config file:

privacy:
  twitter:
    disabled: true
    enableDNT: true
    simple: true

# ...

services:
  instagram:
    disableInlineCSS: true
  twitter:
    disableInlineCSS: true

Do I remember what’s that? No.

To add social links, I put some magic lines into the config:

  socialIcons:
    - name: github
      title: View my Github
      url: "https://github.com/knightpp"
    - name: mastodon
      title: View my Mastodon
      url: https://mastodon.knightpp.cc/@knightpp

In other words, I don’t feel like I have full control over the website’s generation.

Zine

Zine is a lot more simple. You still need to setup some .ziggy files, but template generation is exposed, allowing for experimentation.

Wait, there’s more. The author built superhtml from the ground up! It can format HTML files and more importatly serve as an LSP implementation! See also scripty, supermd.

This is how I display available languages:

<div :loop="$page.locales()">
	<ctx :if="$loop.it.site().localeCode().eql($site.localeCode()).not()"
		locale="$loop.it.site().localeName()"
	>
		<a href="$loop.it.link()" :text="$ctx.locale"></a>
	</ctx>
</div>

And here’s how to create conditions within templates:

<ctx :if="$site.page('devlog').subpages().first?()">
	&nbsp; • &nbsp;
	<a href="$if.link()" :text="$i18n.get('Devlog')"></a>
</ctx>

Great! Say no to ugly templates like this:

{{if .IsAttachment}}
	<a href="">...</a>
{{else}}{{if .IsMenu}}
	<hr>
{{else}}
	<div>Everything else</div>
{{end}}{{end}}

You probably already noticed everything was written in Zig.