After years of running WordPress on a self-hosted DigitalOcean droplet, I decided it was time for a change. The site was slow, required constant maintenance, and felt like overkill for a simple blog. Here’s how I migrated to Hugo and Cloudflare Pages.

The Old Setup

My previous infrastructure:

  • Hosting: DigitalOcean droplet ($12/month)
  • CMS: Self-hosted WordPress with MySQL
  • CDN: Cloudflare (free tier) in front
  • Maintenance: Regular updates, security patches, backups
  • Performance: Decent, but database queries added latency

The droplet ran Ubuntu with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and all the typical WordPress stack. It worked, but it felt heavy for what was essentially a collection of markdown-style posts.

Why Hugo?

I wanted something:

  • Fast: Static sites are blazing fast
  • Simple: No database, no PHP, just HTML/CSS/JS
  • Portable: Content in markdown, easy to version control
  • Free: Cloudflare Pages offers free hosting
  • Secure: No CMS to hack, no database to compromise

Hugo checked all these boxes. It’s a static site generator written in Go that’s incredibly fast and has a great ecosystem of themes.

The Migration Process

1. Export WordPress Content

I used the built-in WordPress export tool to generate an XML file with all posts, then converted them to markdown format. Several tools exist for this conversion, including wordpress-to-hugo-exporter and various online converters. Manual cleanup was necessary afterward to fix formatting inconsistencies.

2. Choose a Theme

I selected the Terminal theme for its clean, minimal design. The retro terminal aesthetic fits well with technical content and provides excellent readability.

3. Set Up Hugo Locally

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# Install Hugo
brew install hugo

# Create new site
hugo new site network-notes.com
cd network-notes.com

# Add theme
git submodule add https://github.com/panr/hugo-theme-terminal.git themes/terminal

# Configure
cp themes/terminal/exampleSite/config.toml .
# Edit config.toml with my settings

4. Migrate Content

I moved all the converted markdown files into content/posts/ organized by year:

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content/
└── posts/
    ├── 2015/
    ├── 2016/
    └── 2020/

Each post needed some cleanup - fixing image paths, updating internal links, and adjusting frontmatter.

5. Set Up Cloudflare Pages

Cloudflare Pages is incredibly simple:

  1. Push Hugo site to GitHub
  2. Connect GitHub repo to Cloudflare Pages
  3. Configure build settings:
    • Build command: hugo
    • Build output directory: public
    • Environment variable: HUGO_VERSION=0.120.0

That’s it. Every push to main triggers a new build and deployment.

6. Configure DNS

Updated my Cloudflare DNS to point to Pages:

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network-notes.com → CNAME → network-notes-com.pages.dev (proxied)

I also set up a preview branch:

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blog2.network-notes.com → CNAME → preview.network-notes-com.pages.dev (proxied)

This lets me review posts before publishing to production.

7. Decommission DigitalOcean

Once everything was working, I:

  • Backed up the WordPress database (just in case)
  • Took a final snapshot of the droplet
  • Destroyed the droplet
  • Saved $12/month

The Results

Performance: Page load times dropped from ~800ms to ~200ms. Static HTML is fast.

Maintenance: Zero. No more WordPress updates, no more security patches, no more database backups.

Cost: $0/month for hosting (Cloudflare Pages free tier is generous)

Workflow: Write in markdown, commit to git, automatic deployment. Much better than the WordPress editor.

Reliability: Cloudflare’s global CDN means the site is fast everywhere and has excellent uptime.

Infrastructure as Code

I manage all my DNS and Cloudflare configuration with Terraform. The network-notes.com configuration includes:

  • DNS records
  • Page rules for caching
  • SSL/TLS settings
  • Preview branch setup

Everything is version controlled and reproducible, making it easy to recreate or modify the infrastructure.

Lessons Learned

Markdown is powerful: Once you get used to writing in markdown, it’s hard to go back to WYSIWYG editors.

Static sites aren’t limiting: For a blog, you don’t need dynamic content. Comments can be handled by external services if needed.

Git-based workflows are great: Having your entire site in version control is liberating. Rollbacks are trivial, history is preserved, and collaboration is easy.

Cloudflare Pages is excellent: The free tier is generous, builds are fast, and the preview deployments are incredibly useful.

Would I Recommend It?

Absolutely, if you’re running a simple blog or documentation site. The migration took a weekend, but the ongoing benefits are worth it:

  • No more server maintenance
  • Faster site
  • Better workflow
  • Lower costs
  • More secure

If you need dynamic features (user accounts, complex forms, e-commerce), WordPress or another CMS might still make sense. But for content-focused sites, static site generators like Hugo are hard to beat.

Resources

The blog is now faster, cheaper, and easier to maintain. Sometimes simpler really is better.