TL;DR
JeffGeerling.com, which ran on Drupal since 2009 and passed through major upgrades up to Drupal 10, was migrated to the static site generator Hugo in early 2026. The move is intended to simplify publishing and cut down on maintenance work, but comments and some features like integrated search are temporarily unavailable while migration work continues.
What happened
The personal site JeffGeerling.com, in continuous operation on Drupal since 2009 and upgraded through versions 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, was moved to Hugo in a migration completed in early January 2026. The site owner cited the increasing operational overhead of running a full-featured Digital Experience Platform for a solo blog—managing modules, PHP, Composer, Drush, MariaDB, Nginx, and CDN purges—as a primary reason for the change. The author had already been drafting posts in Markdown for years, so switching to a static site generator that natively consumes Markdown simplified the publishing workflow to a local edit, set frontmatter, build, commit, and push. The migration covered more than 20 years of content and 3,500+ items, and the author warns there will be broken images and missing URLs as redirects and fixes are applied. Site comments are disabled site-wide for now while a self-hosted static commenting solution is planned as a later phase.
Why it matters
- Reduces operational complexity for a single-author blog by moving from a full DXP to a static site generator.
- Streamlines content publishing because Hugo uses Markdown natively, cutting repetitive CMS steps.
- Some dynamic features like comments and integrated search are temporarily offline, affecting reader interactions.
- Large historical archives and custom migrations increase risk of broken links and missing media during the transition.
Key facts
- Site ran on Drupal since 2009 and was upgraded through Drupal 6 → 7 → 8 → 9 → 10.
- The public migration to Hugo was posted on Jan 3, 2026.
- The archive includes over 20 years of content and more than 3,500 posts or items.
- The author has been writing posts in Markdown since 2020, easing the move to a Markdown-native SSG.
- Jekyll was used for some hobby sites on GitHub Pages, but Hugo was chosen for sites on the author's own infrastructure.
- Comments have been disabled site-wide while a self-hosted commenting solution is developed in a second phase.
- Integrated site search had been provided by Apache Solr in the past; the Solr instance was sunsetting and a new search approach must be chosen.
- Ongoing DDoS activity since 2022 led the author to adopt tighter caching and cache-purge workflows (Ansible + Cloudflare).
What to watch next
- Progress on migrating and restoring comments as the planned self-hosted static commenting system is implemented.
- How site search is reintroduced or replaced now that the previous Apache Solr integration is no longer active.
- Resolution of redirected or broken URLs and image references from the large historical archive.
Quick glossary
- Hugo: An open-source static site generator written in Go that builds websites from Markdown and templates into static files.
- Drupal: A widely used open-source content management system (CMS) and digital experience platform that supports dynamic sites and rich user workflows.
- Static Site Generator (SSG): A tool that converts source files, often Markdown, into static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files for deployment without a server-side CMS.
- Markdown: A lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor, commonly used for writing web content and documentation.
- Digital Experience Platform (DXP): An integrated set of technologies designed to enable large-scale content management, personalization, and multi-channel digital experiences.
Reader FAQ
Why did the site move off Drupal?
The author cited the increasing maintenance burden of running a full DXP for a personal blog and preferred a simpler, Markdown-first workflow.
Are comments gone permanently?
No — comments are currently disabled while the author works on a self-hosted commenting solution expected in a later phase.
Will search be available again?
The author noted the previous Apache Solr search was sunset and said they need to decide how to implement search for the Hugo site; specifics are not confirmed in the source.
Will old links and images still work?
The author is trying to keep content locations or add redirects, but with more than 3,500 items and two decades of content some broken images and URLs are expected.
JeffGeerling.com has been Migrated to Hugo Jan 3, 2026 Since 2009, this website has run on Drupal. Starting with Drupal 6, and progressing through major site upgrades and migrations to…
Sources
- Jeffgeerling.com has been Migrated to Hugo
- JeffGeerling.com has been Migrated to Hugo
- Jeff Geerling | Home
- Hugo
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