I decided to go with Hugo to build my personal website. The only thing I based my choice on was the build time. I thought Hugo was in the same league as Astro when it comes to content management perks, but it isn’t quite there yet.

What Can Be Added!

Yes, it’s possible to extend Hugo’s functionality through modules that modify the build process. For example, MDX support in Hugo can be addressed through a module that renders MDX at build time. These integrations have been used to incorporate Tailwind and other frontend libraries.

Building on Vercel

I used some third-party Hugo tools, specifically HugoMods. The icons module caught my attention because I wanted to add icons to my website without importing an entire font.

Locally, everything worked perfectly. However, after pushing my changes, the Vercel build failed:

[12:10:50.440] Total in 3 ms
[12:10:50.441] Error: failed to load modules: failed to download modules: binary with name "go" not found in PATH
[12:10:50.446] Error: Command "hugo --gc" exited with 1

When Hugo attempted to install the modules needed for the build, it couldn’t find the Go binaries. I sought help from Claude and GPT, but had to guide them through each step myself.

What Worked?

Step 1: In the Vercel dashboard → Settings → Environment Variables, add:

HUGO_VERSION = <latest version>

Step 2: In the General tab, select Hugo as the framework preset, then override the build command with:

curl -L https://go.dev/dl/go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz -o go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz && \
tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz && \
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin && \
go env GOPATH && \
hugo --gc --minify

Note: Replace go1.22.2 with the latest Go version at the time of your deployment.

Why the Build Command and Not the Install Command?

Placing Go installation steps in the install command field consistently fails — Vercel’s build process can’t locate the binaries afterward. Placing everything in the build command field is the only reliable approach.

I also published this post across multiple platforms to run a small experiment on which one ranks first in search results.