By Brett Barker July 8, 2023
Welcome to our new site and our new group essentially. The Emerald Coast Linux Users Group was formed with some members who were part of Northwest Florida Linux Users Group (NWFLUG) along with some new members. Essentially, NWFLUG had not met in some time, but there was a renewed interest in gathering again. I, myself, had not attended NWFLUG and desired to meet with some like-minded people to discuss Linux and technology.
With the re-emergence of the Linux users group, came the decision to rebrand and start fresh. The Emerald Coast Linux Users Group was born. As a part of the new name, we needed a new site. We decided on eclinux.org. We figured it was a little more memorable than just a long acronym like eclug or something.
The new website also just gave me an excuse to play with Hugo. I had heard about Hugo from a couple of different places. One of which was the Linux podcasting network Jupiter Broadcasting. They recently used Hugo to recreate their own website.
So, what is Hugo? Unlike a website built on something like WordPress. Hugo is a static site generator. There are not any php scripts or dynamic content. Most of Hugo is configured via markdown pages or toml configuration files. Then Hugo generates a static website from that content. For this site, I started by finding a Hugo theme called Universal Theme. I loaded it up and began some basic modification such as swapping out graphics and modifying content to suite our Linux User Group purposes. It has and will continue to be a learning experience.
The other great thing about Hugo and the way it has been set up, is that it is all hosted on Github. So, anyone is able to clone the repository and generate this site. Contributors can simply pull and push contributions to the site. Even better, the site is then hosted by Netlify. Netlify watches the Github repository and when changes are committed, Netlify will run the Hugo build command to rebuild the website. Simple and easy.
The site is nothing extraordinary, but it is a new place to call home. I hope it continues to evolve and improve overtime as this group of Linux enthusiasts grows. So, until next time.