Website Update

I had a brief few hours after my midterms this semester to update my website.

I’ve got some exciting projects that I’m working on this year and hopefully will be able to document on this site. I’m also working on publishing a few blogs that I’ve been working on since last year.

Why Change the site #

I’ve been using Hugo PaperMod’s theme since 2021 when I first launched this website, victorzheng.ca and I had always hopped to update the site due to a few issues.

In addition, the GitHub repo that I was maintaining this project was getting bigger every blog and images were getting hard to manage. The repo was difficult to use. I quickly searched up some possible alternative themes and landed on Hugo Congo.

The main advantage in my opinion is that it runs TailwindCSS and was only introduced a few years ago. It’s modern, faster, sleeker which really sets it apart.

What’s Changed #

Changed the Theme and Configurations #

Changed the theme to Congo from PaperMod. There were some old YAML configs that needed to be changed to TOML. In addition, there are a few Congo specific configurations that I had to manage.

Cleaned up GitHub #

I’ve cleaned up the GitHub files format so that I’m no longer referencing files in different folders from one blog. All the necessary files are in the folder that I’ve already created. The blog item itself is in an index.md file and the necessary files are at the same folder level.

Better UI/UX #

Better UI/UX experience with the introduction of better taxonomies and thumbnails. Every blog’s taxonomies and thumbnails are now viewable from the parent directory.

A look at my new site for showcasing chess

More breadcrumbs #

Every blog now has a parent so that they can be organized better. I’m still writing blogs in markdown for ease of publishing.

Removal of debt sitting around #

I decided to remove a bunch of old files such as my old website from high-school which I used for posting photos of advertures in BC.

Smaller thumbnails #

I found that Hugo Papermod’s thumbnails were extremely large. Probably there was a way of updating it.

More responsive UI #

With Tailwind CSS I can really leverage the responsivity.

Ability to use new features #

Since Congo is so new and always updating, I am excited to try out the new features that they advertise. Such as ability to add charts to the site and the ability to add mermaid.js

The old site #

The following photos show my old website.

The homepage of my old site

The articles page of my old site

The archive page of my site

The about page of my old site

My even older site #

The site I maintained in high-school I decided to tear down