When I started the “Candidatos FIME” site the main technology was clear: Hugo, an incredibly fast static site generator. That gave us a fast and secure site from day one. But a key question remained: where to host it?
Requirements for the Perfect Host
The wishlist was not short. We needed a solution that was:
- Free: It’s a community project, so the budget was zero.
- Scalable: Traffic could spike during key periods. We couldn’t afford downtime from a traffic surge.
- Automated: We wanted a modern workflow. Do a
git pushand let the magic happen—no FTP uploads like in 2005. - Fast: Performance was crucial. A slow site is a site nobody visits.
The Discovery: Cloudflare Pages
I explored several options, from traditional shared hosting to more modern services. That’s when I found Cloudflare Pages. It promised everything we wanted, and it didn’t disappoint.
Setup was trivial. We connected our GitHub repository, Cloudflare automatically detected it was a Hugo project, and configured the build process for me. In minutes the site was online and served through their global CDN.
For me the biggest advantage was the native integration with the modern development ecosystem. The fact that a
deploy.ymlin GitHub Actions could talk directly to Cloudflare to deploy was the deciding factor.
Today, whenever I update code or candidate data, a git push to the main branch triggers an automatic process that builds, validates, and deploys the site in seconds. All of this with top-tier performance and a cost of zero dollars. A real gem for Jamstack developers.