I know I know. It isn’t quite 2025. I was getting excited.

For the past few months, I have been unhappy with how messy my blog has looked. It isn’t terrible, and it’s my own fault (my content architecture is a mess). In response, I whipped up five or so different, mostly boring “themes” using Tailwind and plain HTML. I really didn’t like what I was creating. I stopped and just let it be for a bit.

Then I asked Bluesky and friends (Threads, etc.) what blog designs they admired. Seeing all the suggestions really helped me think through what I wanted.

Turns out I don’t want anything too fancy lol. As Dan Sinker said when I showed him my new theme: “I think if you’re going for a very minimalist aesthetic you’re close.” Hah. Yep.

ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•！

What I settled on is something I have been looking at for ages.

This theme is a very light approximation of the designs of bear blog, write.as, and other super minimal writing platforms that I have been admiring for years. I love the simplicity and the focus on the content. I am nothing without my content. ;)

I started with the simple bearcub hugo theme from @clente, and tweaked and tweaked. After replacing, and fucking with almost every file in the theme, I eventually got to a place I was happy with. It is familiar enough to my inspiration, but ended up different enough that I think it is close to my own. Regardless, it fits my needs perfectly.

Now we can begin

I do this every few years. The last time, I think, was 2017. I’m unsure exactly. I tried to peep my change log, but my constant commits of “changed theme” and “updated theme” are not particularly helpful. lol. Good thing I made my fancy commit message robot.

The site is still Hugo. The content is still a mess. It is basically the same, but now just looks much different.

I am trying to do a lot of work to make it more accessible, faster, and maybe one day multilingual. So far, so good (hit high 90s and 100s on lighthouse!).

If you see something say something

With all that said - if you notice something, please let me know. I really want to make this theme last and be magic. Or at least work and get out of the way of the beautiful content. ;)