Changing My Website Theme

This website or blog not sure what to call it, is built using Hugo which is amazing if you haven’t come across it before. Hugo is a static site generator, and it’s my go-to for generating websites that don’t require dynamic updates. It’s simple and just works, a blog is a perfect use case for this tool.

I’m a Java developer by trade, and sitting server side is where I’m most comfortable. So when it comes to front-end work and making things look pretty I’m not great. That being said I did manage to create a Hugo Theme which is published in their main theme directory. The fact that I was able to do that, is a testament to how great Hugo truly is.

Theme Change

Changing themes with Hugo is rather straightforward. It’s just a case of creating a git submodule within the themes directory of the site structure. Then change the configuration file to point to that directory, child play. With that in mind, it lends itself to swapping themes in and out to find one that suits me, which I’ve spent a little time doing, more than creating content, to be honest, but I won’t go there.

Theme Requirements

I’m a simple person, and I wanted a simple theme with minimal features and design. I could have used the theme that I created, and most people would do this. But the theme didn’t match what I wanted my blog to be. The Bootstrap Freelancer theme was more of a showcase of projects and other work that’s been done, which isn’t the purpose of this site. Also, there were times that this site could be slow, as it was graphic-heavy and used external frameworks for the design and structure. Well, it was based on Bootstrap and was a templated version of the Freelancer design, so that’s to be expected.

My requirements were simple, I wanted it to be simple. I also wanted the site to be fast with no external JavaScript or style sheets. Also with the importance of privacy, I didn’t want any trackers or data collection anywhere, resulting in my blog not needing any sort of cookie-click banner. I hate those, so wouldn’t want anyone else having to go through that either.

Smigle

On the theme showcase for Hugo, I came across Smigle. Firstly I love the name, it’s rather fun to say, also it checked pretty much all my requirements. It’s super basic and looks like it’s straight from the 90s, it makes my blog look like you’re viewing it on the way back machine! Also, it’s fast, like really fast, and has zero distractions.

There are a few things that I don’t like, which means that at some point I’ll be forking the project and modifying the theme, gotta love Open Source. So these changes I want to make are small, but they will end up making the theme perfect.

Firstly in the banner of the theme, I’m forced to have a display image, at the moment it’s my little avatar, however, if an image is not provided then it defaults to the theme’s logo. I’d rather not have a logo on the page, as I find it rather unnecessary.

Second, is the tagline which is under my name on the site, again this was forced upon me. I can place an empty string in the required field, however, it messes up the spacing of the site title, which upsets me, so in the update, the entire thing will get removed.

Finally is the favicon, this is such a small thing most wouldn’t care or notice, but I want a custom one. Currently, it doesn’t seem to respect the one in my overrides static folder, but this could still be down to user error, if it isn’t my fault then I’ll be updating that as well.

Final Thoughts

I fancied a change of how the site looked because let’s be honest it’s the most important blog on the planet and the centre of all. I’m a backend developer and wanted a theme that represents that and can be seen a little bit funny that a backend developer does not care about the pretty frontend. Well, I find it funny. Finally, it’s rather fast and doesn’t track you or need to confirm or accept anything, it’s like you weren’t here. To be honest you probably weren’t.