Hint on how to make website generation faster?

support
1

Hi,

I created a website with 15097 pages.
I’m using Hugo 0.123.0
It takes about 2 minutes to build and require a lot of RAM.

I feel like I request Hugo to create quite a lot of internal links, and that it consumes a lot of processing time.
Is there some easy steps I should look at to reduce the build time?
For example, there is no need for rss on this website, since this is not a blog or news focused website.
Should I make the effort to update Hugo to a newer version? Does it worth it?

The content can be downloaded here: https://jibecfed.fedorapeople.org/partage/2025-12-19-website.zip (I removed big files in static folders, removing it have no impact on the RAM/time)
The full website is published there: https://communityhealth.languages-in-floss.eu
The source code is available here: jibecfed/localization-statistics: Global statistics on translation levels of fedora products - Codeberg.org

Here is the output of hugo (I’m running it on Fedora Linux)

$ time ../hugo -v --templateMetrics --templateMetricsHints
WARN  deprecated: --verbose was deprecated in Hugo v0.114.0 and will be removed in a future release. use --logLevel info
Start building sites … 
hugo v0.123.0-3c8a4713908e48e6523f058ca126710397aa4ed5 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2024-02-19T16:32:38Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 5000 files_total 5000 duration 3.255422686s
INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 9808 files_total 14808 duration 2.557274914s
INFO  build:  step process duration 5.813059655s
INFO  build:  step assemble duration 271.885476ms
INFO  static: syncing static files to / duration 6.097209899s
INFO  deprecated: .Site.LastChange was deprecated in Hugo v0.123.0 and will be removed in a future release. Use .Site.Lastmod instead.
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4591 numGC 23 limit 3.87 GB alloc 3.92 GB totalAlloc 8.25 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4590 numGC 26 limit 3.87 GB alloc 6.48 GB totalAlloc 16.96 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 13639 numGC 28 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.22 GB totalAlloc 22.11 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 17705 numGC 42 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.93 GB totalAlloc 55.96 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 11860 numGC 51 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.55 GB totalAlloc 75.36 GB
INFO  build:  step render substep pages site en outputFormat html duration 32.612506706s
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 9183 numGC 58 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.40 GB totalAlloc 89.94 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 9181 numGC 67 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.72 GB totalAlloc 109.58 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 6851 numGC 77 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.53 GB totalAlloc 131.22 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4184 numGC 87 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.07 GB totalAlloc 152.16 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 984 numGC 97 limit 3.87 GB alloc 6.14 GB totalAlloc 177.96 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 2555 numGC 143 limit 3.87 GB alloc 6.89 GB totalAlloc 300.16 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 2744 numGC 153 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.67 GB totalAlloc 323.94 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 2354 numGC 162 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.60 GB totalAlloc 347.17 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 9233 numGC 174 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.86 GB totalAlloc 375.81 GB
INFO  build:  step render substep pages site en outputFormat rss duration 1m4.41267451s
INFO  build:  step render pages 15097 content 47094 duration 1m37.037714078s
INFO  build:  step postProcess duration 46.32µs

Template Metrics:

     cumulative       average       maximum      cache  percent  cached  total  
       duration      duration      duration  potential   cached   count  count  template
     ----------      --------      --------  ---------  -------  ------  -----  --------
  6m48.813004134s  1.444568919s  1m3.99938405s          0        0       0    283  _internal/_default/rss.xml
  1m56.541027337s    8.021269ms  726.462981ms          0        0       0  14529  _default/single.html
  1m18.546736017s      20.118µs  345.433481ms          0        0       0  3904299  _internal/shortcodes/ref.html
   5.780843102s     390.254µs   99.307534ms         46        0       0  14813  partials/head.html
   2.384313473s     160.982µs   20.551388ms         69        0       0  14811  partials/breadcrumb.html
   517.768592ms      39.979µs   57.412876ms          0        0       0  12951  shortcodes/resource.html
   442.307664ms   63.186809ms    93.51695ms          0        0       0      7  _default/list_packages.html
   442.038842ms      29.843µs    3.335244ms         58        0       0  14812  partials/header.html
   391.162132ms    1.504469ms    18.85302ms          0        0       0    260  territories/term.html
   263.880004ms  263.880004ms  263.880004ms          0        0       0      1  _internal/_default/sitemap.xml
    117.74572ms       7.948µs   10.027127ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/nav.html
   116.474136ms       7.862µs   46.646476ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/head_custom.html
   115.902269ms   16.557467ms   42.791204ms          0        0       0      7  _default/list_languages.html
    77.930459ms   77.930459ms   77.930459ms          0        0       0      1  territories/list.html
    64.172382ms       4.332µs    3.777656ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/footer.html
    21.860609ms    3.122944ms   10.834354ms          0        0       0      7  _default/release.html
    15.499478ms   15.499478ms   15.499478ms          0        0       0      1  index.html
     6.201637ms    6.201637ms    6.201637ms          0        0       0      1  404.html
       44.686µs      44.686µs      44.686µs        100        0       0      1  partials/footer_custom.html

INFO  build:  duration 1m43.126349614s

                   |  EN    
-------------------+--------
  Pages            | 15097  
  Paginator pages  |     0  
  Non-page files   |     0  
  Static files     |  2161  
  Processed images |     0  
  Aliases          |     0  
  Cleaned          |     0  

Total in 103491 ms

real	1m43,996s
user	8m32,757s
sys	0m22,275s
2

Do you need RSS for all the 15000+ pages? A lot of time is spent on building the feed.

See the “cache potential” column, partials with score 100 can be called with partialCached.

3

It should be fairly easy, why not start there.

Also, if you don’t need RSS, add this to your config:

disableKinds = ["rss"]
4

Removing RSS indeed really improves the processing time, thank you :slight_smile:
The total alloc memory were also reduced from 365GB to 65GB

$ time ../hugo -v --templateMetrics --templateMetricsHints
WARN  deprecated: --verbose was deprecated in Hugo v0.114.0 and will be removed in a future release. use --logLevel info
Start building sites … 
hugo v0.123.0-3c8a4713908e48e6523f058ca126710397aa4ed5 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2024-02-19T16:32:38Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 3000 files_total 3000 duration 3.000225924s
INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 4000 files_total 7000 duration 3.593375756s
INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 3000 files_total 10000 duration 3.223247197s
INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 3000 files_total 13000 duration 3.352174626s
INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 1808 files_total 14808 duration 929.396498ms
INFO  build:  step process duration 14.098972874s
INFO  build:  step assemble duration 246.053569ms
INFO  deprecated: .Site.LastChange was deprecated in Hugo v0.123.0 and will be removed in a future release. Use .Site.Lastmod instead.
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4591 numGC 26 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.21 GB totalAlloc 8.11 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4590 numGC 30 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.25 GB totalAlloc 15.77 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 15491 numGC 32 limit 3.87 GB alloc 5.49 GB totalAlloc 23.85 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 968 numGC 42 limit 3.87 GB alloc 6.44 GB totalAlloc 45.13 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 8852 numGC 45 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.82 GB totalAlloc 53.34 GB
INFO  dynacache: adjusted partitions' max size evicted 4231 numGC 51 limit 3.87 GB alloc 4.00 GB totalAlloc 65.35 GB
INFO  build:  step render substep pages site en outputFormat html duration 30.377162536s
INFO  build:  step render pages 14814 content 14812 duration 30.383772307s
INFO  build:  step postProcess duration 61.381µs

Template Metrics:

     cumulative       average       maximum      cache  percent  cached  total  
       duration      duration      duration  potential   cached   count  count  template
     ----------      --------      --------  ---------  -------  ------  -----  --------
  3m41.225346449s   15.226467ms  993.451555ms          0        0       0  14529  _default/single.html
  20.179957417s      21.827µs   46.128798ms          0        0       0  924501  _internal/shortcodes/ref.html
   4.147459595s     279.987µs   52.032123ms         46        0       0  14813  partials/head.html
   2.240193645s     151.252µs   13.270117ms         69        0       0  14811  partials/breadcrumb.html
   718.479174ms    2.763381ms   33.216408ms          0        0       0    260  territories/term.html
   452.079683ms      30.521µs   10.703085ms         58        0       0  14812  partials/header.html
   437.666679ms   62.523811ms  112.894037ms          0        0       0      7  _default/list_packages.html
   377.274555ms  377.274555ms  377.274555ms          0        0       0      1  _internal/_default/sitemap.xml
   152.454036ms  152.454036ms  152.454036ms          0        0       0      1  territories/list.html
   142.350568ms       9.609µs   20.693309ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/nav.html
   111.002201ms       7.493µs   37.261929ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/head_custom.html
     84.47549ms       5.702µs    3.791423ms        100      100   14812  14813  partials/footer.html
    84.325865ms   12.046552ms   24.121207ms          0        0       0      7  _default/list_languages.html
    63.314398ms       20.43µs    3.084498ms          0        0       0   3099  shortcodes/resource.html
    17.870098ms    2.552871ms    9.580725ms          0        0       0      7  _default/release.html
    15.201086ms   15.201086ms   15.201086ms          0        0       0      1  index.html
     9.539395ms    9.539395ms    9.539395ms          0        0       0      1  404.html
       88.911µs      88.911µs      88.911µs        100        0       0      1  partials/footer_custom.html

INFO  build:  duration 44.729962603s
INFO  static: syncing static files to / duration 1m25.33311426s

                   |  EN    
-------------------+--------
  Pages            | 14814  
  Paginator pages  |     0  
  Non-page files   |     0  
  Static files     |  3205  
  Processed images |     0  
  Aliases          |     0  
  Cleaned          |     0  

Total in 85340 ms

real	1m26,559s
user	2m14,411s
sys	0m23,875s

What would be your suggested next step?
Looking at the single.html? internal links?

5

Hello,

Please do not completely disable RSS feeds if possible.

There are still enough users who would like to use such feeds. Like me, for example.