Let’s talk themes…
A long while ago, like “last century,” I had a few sites that I had self hosted. Often I would model the site after whatever it was I was visiting on a regular basis those days. At one point it was, probably, fark or something similar. Just lists of content I felt was interesting. Though, my favorite, was probably my love of perl-monks and the game of perl-golf.
I kept those sites themed like that for a long while. Like most folks, I transitioned to Wordpress because I thought I’d just love to write posts “on the go” via my phone, etc. I never did.
So, these days I’m self hosting a few services I need and enjoy, but my domains will need their own static site generations. I’m writing this post now, in vim, and using a github repo tied to a Cloudflare workflow that builds it using hugo. I like it, thus far.
But… themes?
There are a metric shit-ton of themes for sites like Wordpress, and 99% of them end up wanting to charge you for them. That is ok with me - as someone who is often making crafts through hobbies like crochet or knitting, I am no stranger to “pay me for this pattern.” The themes available for Hugo have all, thus far, seemed to be free. I appreciate how easy it is to snag a new one, deploy it locally, test it out… and throw it away if it doesn’t fit.
If you’re looking for Hugo themes, seriously, give this site a try - and if you dig deep enough you’ll find some of them link directly to their github repos. Fork one, mess with it, and see what you come up with. It’s what I plan on doing.