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A minimal, text-heavy theme for Hugo

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Explore Theme Features

Aug 19, 2025 Rain Doctor

Explore is a minimal, text-heavy theme for Hugo, designed for academic sites, personal blogs, and essays. It prioritizes readability, performance, accessibility, and maintainability. Explore is built with Gemini Code Assist.

Features

  • High Performance: Minimal CSS and JS, with performance budgets in mind.
  • Accessible: WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, with full keyboard navigation and screen-reader support.
  • Responsive & Modern: Looks great on all devices, with a clean, modern aesthetic.
  • Dark Mode: Automatic and manual dark mode switching.
  • Configurable Search: Choose between client-side search with Fuse.js or Pagefind.
  • Widgets: Server-rendered widgets for recent posts, categories, and tags.
  • SEO Optimized: Includes JSON-LD, OpenGraph, and Twitter Card metadata.
  • Hugo Pipes: Uses Hugo’s asset pipeline for CSS processing.

Configuration

All theme options are configured in your site’s config.toml under the [params] section. Below is a breakdown of the available parameters, matching the exampleSite/config.toml.

UI Parameters

These settings control the behavior of user interface elements.

[params.ui]
stickyHeader = true
showSearch = true # Show search icon in header
searchEngine = "fuse" # options: fuse, pagefind
homeView = "default" # options: "default", "compact"

Style Parameters

These settings control the visual appearance of the theme.

[params.style]
primary = "#6C3DBF"
accent  = "#5FA8A3"
containerMaxWidth = "1280px"  # Max width of the site container
maxWidthCh = 75               # Max width of readable content in 'ch' units

Sidebar & Widgets

Control the global sidebar position and which widgets are displayed.

[params.sidebar]
globalPosition = "right" # Options: "left", "right", "bottom", "off"
widgets = ["recent", "categories", "tags"]
recentCount = 5

Homepage Hero

Configure the hero section that can be displayed at the top of the homepage.

[params.hero]
show = false # Set to true to show the hero section
title = "Explore Theme"
tagline = "A minimal, text-heavy theme for Hugo, designed for academic sites, personal blogs, and essays."
buttonText = "Learn More"
buttonURL = "/pages/about/"

Single Page & ToC Parameters

Control elements on single post pages.

[params.single]
showPrevNext = true   # Show previous/next post navigation
showRelated = true    # Show related posts
relatedCount = 4      # Number of related posts to show

[params.single.toc]
  enable = true       # Enable the ToC. Can be disabled per-page with `toc: false`
  position = "right" # ToC position. Options: "inline", "left", "right", "off"
features documentation hugo

Table of Contents

  • Features
  • Configuration
    • UI Parameters
    • Style Parameters
    • Sidebar & Widgets
    • Homepage Hero
    • Single Page & ToC Parameters

Recent Posts

  • Hello World: A Guide to Getting Started
  • Explore Theme Features
  • Markdown & Typography Guide
  • A Post with Widgets
  • Contact Us

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Hello World: A Guide to Getting Started

Aug 20, 2025
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