@frase I'm using Hugo, it's only one part of what I call a static stack, because there are a near infinite variation of how to get the site generator like Hugo to deploy sites. How you want to revision control the source files, etc.
For my part I'm simply using two scripts out of a SharePoint folder. And I manually upload the static content after being generated. The first script calls the project's local copy of hugo to start the dev site, the other simply builds the site with the local copy of hugo. I have several sites in store, and each version of hugo is potentially breaking... so I can keep the old version with a given site to prevent that break. Best part? No security risk because it's software that runs on my machine only while doing dev work, unlike Wordpress being live all the time.
But if you already have a WP site you're tweaking, it's a ton less work to continue to tweak than it is to start over... what I'm suggesting is a complete redevelopment of the site. But I'm also pointing out that redeveloping will save you money in the long run (HTML only hosting is dirt cheap), and since it helps with rendering speed, make you money too because rendering speed is a primary score in search engines.
Also, you don't need a "Staging site", because Hugo launched with the -S parameter brings up the content in a local web server. So all you need to do to play is make a copy of the source files, and start hugo. As you make changes to the source files, it simply changes what's on your screen. Ready to deploy? Stop the server, run Hugo one last time, and copy the files out of the public folder to the web server.
All of this extra crap in this thread is how you argue with Wordpress to get it to work... how you deal with a terrible product. It's all a huge time sink... and brings be back to my original question. Why are we still using it? Because from my perspective it's simply defective tech, bad in every measure...