Deploying this site to my WebFaction account was super easy, I pretty much just followed the Hugo docs for rsync deployment, with one minor change to minify the html output:
#!/bin/sh
USER=your-username
HOST=your-username.webfactional.com
DIR=webapps/your-app/ # the directory where your web site files should go
hugo --minify && rsync -avz --delete public/ ${USER}@${HOST}:~/${DIR}
exit 0
Note the --minify flag after hugo, which will make your pages even more performant by minifying the the html output.
You might be wondering what the --delete flag does. That an rsync option that removes any unrelated project files from the destination directory of your host. So heads up any non-project/hugo-related file will be deleted in your host directory.
.htaccess file and 404 pages
At WebFaction you can setup a “static” app - a barebones Apache app meant for speed. This sounded like a nice option for Hugo. However, the tradeoff is that .htaccess files won’t get picked up. I really like friendly 404 pages, so I chose to use a regular Apache app with the typical mods loaded, and I can now redirect 404’s like this in .htaccess:
[Instruction on other web servers here](https://gohugo.io/templates/404/).
The one thing that tripped me up was that you need to make sure you put the .htaccess file in your `static` directory, otherwise Hugo will delete it if it's in your root directory - I noticed this on my first deploy:
```sh
building file list ... done
deleting .htaccess
Once I moved it into the static dir it was picked up, deployed and working. Lastly…
Disqus won’t work in your local environment
If you use Disqus for comments - they won’t work unless you’re on your production site. Just FYI there.
Cheers and happy Hugo’ing! So far I’m enjoying the ride 🍻
1/1/2020 Update
I ditched Disqus after noticing all the crap it injects - my performance scores immediately went up. Uncertain if I need a commenting platform or not, if you have an opinion please let me know.
I’ve also taken advantage of Cloudflare’s free plan. for a little extra boost.
I’ve also added some caching directives, so my .htaccess now looks like this (may still tweak the cache lengths):
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 5 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/webp "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-truetype "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-opentype "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/font-woff2 "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/font-sfnt "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
</ifModule>