Themes #

Themes are packages of templates, css, and javascript used by the Hugo engine to produce a Static Site. There are many popular themes to choose from highlighted on Hugo Themes.

Below are my notes and observations on the few with which I am familiar.

Minimal #

Minimal is a simple, clean interface and a reasonable amount of features.

nikitavoloboev uses it for his home site and I am following in his example to using it for my own home site.

Book #

Book is a minimalist theme specialized for documentation websites.

Book has many of the features ideal for a Knowledge Wiki:

• Flexible, tree-based navigation menu
• Simple and effective shortcodes
• Table of Contents for each page
• Git Integration for calculating last edit time and one-click editing.
• Integrated Search using flexsearch
• Light/Dark Theme

I can currently using this theme for my Knowledge Wiki.

Zdoc #

Zdoc (Demo) is an opinionated wiki framework for creating documentation websites.

Zdoc differs from Book in the following ways:

• Navigation Menu only displays the current tree level
• Similar shortcodes
• Language Dropdown
• Integrated Search using Fuse.js
• Light/Dark Theme toggle

Search experience is better because it includes match previews. Search Index is pre-built at Hugo build time so is fast on the client.

Light/Dark Theme toggle is gives better user control, and saves preference to Local Storage.

However, I found it a bit more cumbersome and visualy more noisy than I intended. It doesn’t match the Minimal theme of brisberg.dev as well as I’d like.

My previous attempt to use this theme is preserved in this branch for posterity.