Markdown is the new source code for research. In the age of AI, you need a website platform that is future-proof, performant, and robust.
HugoBlox (formerly Wowchemy) is the AI Website Copilot for Researchers and Technical Founders โ Markdown-Native, Zero Bloat. It combines the ease of a no-code builder with the power of a static site generator โ trusted by 250k+ researchers and founders at Meta, Stanford, NVIDIA, and Y Combinator.
HugoBlox began in 2016 when Geo Cushen (@GeoGainz) tried to build an academic website and CV for job hunting and networking โ and hit the same wall many researchers still face today. JavaScript-heavy site generators were slow and fragile, with thousands of dependencies that broke on upgrade. GitHubโs default Jekyll tooling relied on legacy Ruby and felt anything but intuitive for open research.
Geo built the first version of HugoBlox โ then called Academic โ simply to power his own site. When other researchers started asking โHow did you build that?โ, he open sourced the toolkit so the whole community could benefit. It got the attention of GitHub themselves, who featured it on their Release Radar and blog, and it went viral because thousands of academics, labs, and technical founders shared the same frustration and wanted an intuitive, open-source way to publish and showcase open research.
Today, HugoBlox powers sites for leading labs at NVIDIA, Stanford, and beyond โ thanks to an incredible community of contributors, sponsors, and users whoโve helped shape it along the way. ๐
Why have 250k+ rockstar researchers and founders switched to HugoBlox?
๐ฎ Future-Proof & AI Ready
Your content lives in clean Markdownโthe native language of LLMs (Large Language Models).
๐ง The Copilot Workflow
We bridge the gap between โNo-Codeโ and โPro-Codeโ.
โก Performance without Debt
Vibe coding tools generate fragile โblack boxโ React apps that become a nightmare to maintain.
๐ Research-Grade Power
If you publish papers or technical content, this is your unfair advantage.
.bib file.HugoBlox is built for people who publish serious work and need it to look world-class without fighting their tools.
Best for
Not ideal for
HugoBlox is an all-in-one web framework. Every page is composed from reusable content blocks โ swap, reorder, and configure them without touching templates. You donโt need to learn Go or HTML to build a world-class site. Just stack blocks:
Take full control of your data and your brand.
Choosing the right platform? Hereโs how HugoBlox stacks up against the alternatives researchers and creators typically consider:
| Feature | HugoBlox | WordPress | Jekyll | Squarespace | Obsidian Publish | Quarto | Astro |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Established | 2016 | 2003 | 2008 | 2004 | 2020 | 2022 | 2021 |
| Contributors | 200+ | 1000s | 900+ | โ | ~5 | 139 | 700+ |
| GitHub Stars | 10k+ | โ | 49k | โ | โ | 4k | 50k |
| Purpose-Built for Researchers | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ |
| No-Code Block Builder | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ |
| AI Copilot Deployer | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ |
| Native LaTeX & BibTeX | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ | โ |
| Jupyter / RMarkdown | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ | โ | โ | โ |
| Standard, Future-Proof Markdown | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ .qmd | โ |
| Minimal Dependencies | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ Ruby | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ Haskell | โ ๏ธ 1,200+ pkgs |
| 100/100 Lighthouse | โ | โ | โ ๏ธ | โ | โ | โ | โ |
| Self-Hostable (Free) | โ | ๐ฐ | โ | โ | โ | โ | โ |
| Cost | Free | $$$$ | Free | $$$$ | $8/mo | Free | Free |
Legend: โ Yes | โ ๏ธ Partial/Limited | โ No | โ Not applicable
HugoBlox is Open Core. You can build a complete, professional website for free, and many labs and individuals never need more. Pro is for those who want to move faster with visual editing and premium templates.
| Feature | Open Source | HugoBlox Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Core Framework | โ | โ |
| Studio site editor | โ | โ Included |
| Premium Templates (SaaS, Lab) | โ | โ Included |
| Exclusive Pro Blocks | โ | โ Included |
| Remove HugoBlox attribution? | โ | โ Included |
| Discord Community Support | โค๏ธ | โก๏ธ Priority |
| Support Open Source/Research | โค๏ธ | ๐ Hero Status |
Join the largest Hugo community โ 10k+ GitHub stars, 4k+ Discord members, and 1M+ sites created. Build your legacy today.
Use our Online Copilot to deploy your free website now.
Launch Copilot (Free) โHugoBlox is the AI Website Copilot for researchers and technical founders. Unlike a simple static site generator, it includes an intelligent deployment tool and block-based architecture that lets you build professional sites in minutes. It's Markdown-native, meaning your content is treated as source codeโideal for future-proofing your work for AI agents.
Yes. HugoBlox is Open Core. The underlying framework, 50+ content blocks, and core templates are 100% free and open-source (MIT). You can build a world-class academic CV or research lab site without paying a dime. We monetize via Pro memberships for visual editing tools and premium SaaS/Lab templates.
Speed and Independence. Quarto is great for R users, but it can be slow to build large sites and often requires a specific R/Python environment to run. HugoBlox is a standalone, compiled Go binary that builds sites in milliseconds, not minutes. We also offer more flexible theming with our Block System, giving you professional layouts (like landing pages and portfolios) that go beyond the standard "document" look of Quarto.
Security, Performance, and Ownership. WordPress and Wix rely on slow databases that are vulnerable to hacking (SQL injection). They also lock your data into their platform. HugoBlox generates pure static HTML that achieves 100/100 Lighthouse scores, is unhackable, and lets you own your content in portable Markdown files that will remain readable forever.
Maintenance and Stability. JavaScript frameworks suffer from "dependency hell"โthousands of node_modules that break with every update. HugoBlox uses Hugo Modules (Go), which are incredibly stable. You get the same modern performance without the burden of maintaining a complex React codebase just to publish a blog or CV.
Features and Power. Jekyll and Obsidian are great for simple text, but they struggle with complex research needs. HugoBlox comes with native support for BibTeX publication lists, dynamic widget pages (like a landing page with a contact form, skills section, and recent posts), and rich media embeddingโall usable directly from Markdown without needing custom plugins.
Yes, natively. This is a core differentiator. We support LaTeX math equations ($ ... $) out of the box. You can also blog directly from Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb) without any plugins, making it the standard for data scientists and ML engineers.
It is best-in-class. Because we compile to static HTML, search engines can index your content perfectly without needing to execute JavaScript. We automatically generate sitemaps, RSS feeds, canonical URLs, and Open Graph metadata for every page, giving you a massive SEO advantage over dynamic Single Page Apps (SPAs).
Yes. You can use our Online AI Copilot to build and deploy without touching a terminal. For daily editing, you can use our Studio visual editor, Decap CMS, or simply edit Markdown files in GitHub. Power users can drop into VS Code and use our extension for a pro-code workflow.