> Static site generators are used by technologists who want to tinker and check all the boxes in whatever Chrome's latest devtool benchmark tool is called
No? Downloading Hugo, getting a random theme and writing a few articles is pretty simple and requires no more tinkering than doing the same with a Wordpress (okay, one's actions are big buttons in a UI, the other is copy pasting commands, but in terms of effort, there's barely any difference).
I use Hugo because it's light and allows me to have a blog running for free and scale to infinity (I have at least two articles that sat high up on the front page of HN, and there was neither a hug of death nor a bill associated), with zero maintenance, while also having flexibility if I need it. I haven't even checked my score on Google's whatever and I don't care about it.
As for WordPress, none of what you described can be had for free, and it requires ongoing maintenance (updates to keep up with the crappy ecosystem).
> No? Downloading Hugo, getting a random theme and writing a few articles is pretty simple and requires no more tinkering than doing the same with a Wordpress
This is not even remotely true. There are more hosts than I can count offering one click wordpress installs that dump you straight into a point where you can begin publishing.
> (okay, one's actions are big buttons in a UI, the other is copy pasting commands, but in terms of effort, there's barely any difference).
For the average non-engineering background user, this is a huge difference.
I've spent most of my IT career in hosting. You are vasltly overestimating the capabilities or care factor of a significant chunk of the user market.
I think you should reexamine the Hugo getting started workflow. I think it is pretty scary for a non tech literate person. Even as a programmer, I thought the initial bootstrap to getting a theme in place is clunky. Should come with an out of the box template that lets someone immediately bang out content.
I could guide Mom how to connect to a Wordpress host. I could not say the same for Hugo.
No? Downloading Hugo, getting a random theme and writing a few articles is pretty simple and requires no more tinkering than doing the same with a Wordpress (okay, one's actions are big buttons in a UI, the other is copy pasting commands, but in terms of effort, there's barely any difference).
I use Hugo because it's light and allows me to have a blog running for free and scale to infinity (I have at least two articles that sat high up on the front page of HN, and there was neither a hug of death nor a bill associated), with zero maintenance, while also having flexibility if I need it. I haven't even checked my score on Google's whatever and I don't care about it.
As for WordPress, none of what you described can be had for free, and it requires ongoing maintenance (updates to keep up with the crappy ecosystem).