I’ve been looking at extending the capabilities of my Hugo sites - yes, plural, but more on that later - and the three needs I have and the solutions I’m testing are here, but I’ll do a full post on them once I’ve had some more real world experience with them.
- A basic gallery and lightbox function - I went with Photoswipe.
- A search function - I went with Pagefind.
- A basic comments system - I’m now testing Giscus.
- A basic page view system - I’m testing GoatCounter.
- I’ve also added reading time and word counts to posts.
Photoswipe
Photoswipe adds a configurable but powerful set of image tools, both for galleries and lightboxes. It’s open source and seems well supported.
Pagefind
Another open source solution, it integrates with Hugo, building an index after hugo has built the site, and adding that in using a small JavaScript solution. I don’t think there’s a huge need for search on here, but I had considered moving my WordPress blog to Hugo, so this is a test run for that potentiality.
Giscus
I’ll admit this is an odd one. It adds comments by effectively hooking you into the Github Discussion function, so comments are stored on there (meaning you need a Github account), but viewed here. Again, I don’t think there’s a huge need on this site, but then again, I’ve never had comment capability on this site before.
GoatCounter
I’m not very concerned about views (it’s obvious in the content isn’t it?) but for another site I was asked if I could give an estimate of page views, so I’ll be testing GoatCounter here. It’s the one with the most privacy respecting systems I could find.
Also
This is built in, but I turned on word count and reading estimate for those who find that helpful.