Show HN: A clean and minimalist theme for Jekyll

Thank you, thank you, thank you for actually having screenshots of your theme. I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen themes or color schemes on GitHub (for a blogging platform, for a code editor, for some random plugin supporting app) that have absolutely no screenshots. I have no idea why someone would put time and effort into developing a theme/color scheme (or even porting one from another app/context) and then not post screenshots, but it’s very common.

Agreed, I think for a developer, he may think a demo link is better and enough. But sometimes people just feel tired to open so many links.

Specially when in some corporate places GitHub is not blocked by the proxy while the demo is... :)

> I love how thi

+1, also like how clean this theme is. Worships whitespace too.

They are real minimalists, Lol.

Very nice ! I love the layout.

I created a minimalist css microframework a few months back : https://concrete.style

Wow, it looks so cool, let me have a try :)

FYI, here is an (almost empty) blog using concrete.css : https://louismerlin.github.io/blissue

Thanks

Quick bugreport: filled form fields have black text (Chrome MacOS) even in dark mode, making them unreadable.

+1

Thank you <3 This will be fixed asap

Edit: Fixed

Always love seeing new Jekyll themes focused on content and readability.

I released a minimal CSS "framework" not too long ago based on that concept as well (although not Jekyll based) - https://bradleytaunt.com/typesafe-css/

That is cool, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing that! I've been toying with the idea of building a minimalist Hugo template based on this guy's site: https://jrl.ninja/etc/1/

I might include typesafe-css into it as well, if I ever get to it

That was the original "framework" that inspired mine :) Please do let me know if you build out a Hugo theme (even just based on the 58 and not mine)

Port to Hugo? Many people over there love minimalist themes too. I personally think Hugo will overtake Jekyll in terms of popularity for static site generation. But I love the theme, well done!

Thank you! I'll post to Hugo and Hexo in the next step.

Found these: https://themes.gohugo.io/hugo-theme-yinyang/

https://blog.joway.io

Yeah, moving is theme inspired by YinYang. And I think it needs a back button in posts. Lol

and here I'm betting on Gatsbyjs and the React ecosystem to win out !

I'm thinking about how to export a theme to multiple platforms? Are there any tools for that?

Not sure if that's doable. Hugo uses go templates.

Gatsbyjs uses react templates.

> I personally think Hugo will overtake Jekyll in terms of popularity for static site generation.

When do you estimate that will happen and why do you think it will?

Being mainly focused on writing, you need to take another look at the typographical style of the theme. Longer posts are hard to read.

Will do, thanks for your suggestion!

It's not that bad IMO

its pretty bad. Its all in bold.

Perhaps varying the lengths of the paragraphs will make it look much better, without actually changing the design.

I think this is something the author of the article should consider, not the author of the theme. Reasonable interspersed images and segments will make the article look more beautiful.

May I suggest adding Turbolinks? Performance doesn't get more minimal. :)

https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks

Cool thing! But I'm not sure how to add that into a Jekyll theme. All I need to do is add Turbolinks in `Gemfile` and `bundle install`, right?

You will also have to require Turbolinks in your JavaScript manifest (application.js). See "Installation using Ruby on Rails" in the docs.

Super nice! Looks similar to whiteglass: https://github.com/yous/whiteglass

Lol, it looks like the author like Bitter too.

That SVG (https://github.com/huangyz0918/moving/blob/master/github/ban...) is huge! 3MB - maybe you can shrink it somehow ;)

Ooops, thanks for reminding, I'll do it right now.

This looks nice!

On https://www.polibyte.com/ I'm happily using https://github.com/johno/pixyll which has a similar aesthetic.

很整洁！Really like it!

What's the thinking behind the Bitter font? I thought it was monospaced for a minute, which would've been cool.

May I recommend spacing out the lines? The usual rule of thumb is 1.5x spacing vs. line height.

More examples with photos and figures in various sizes would help users who are picking out the theme.

I also went for something minimal for my blog. Here's a comparable page: https://shan.io/writing/

Very practical advice! This theme is still in progress and I think your suggestions about the spacing and the line height really did help.

I absolutely adore slab serif and Bitter in particular. It's so clear and punchy. It's good on display, on print and on kindle and it's free too.

The only downside I think is that people are sometimes distracted because they're not quite used to and surprised by something that is so ... readable!

As a minimalist, this theme is actually gorgeous for someone looking to have a simple blog or portfolio. Great job.

Thank you, I love minimalist theme. And I believe we should focus more on the posts and good writing experience than the layouts. ;)

It's minimalist, but it sure is not gorgeous in my opinion.

Haha, I think the gorgeous is different from a minimalist's.

Well, as a guy who has OCD... the "white space" is like heaven for me. I don't like clutter so white space reminds me of peace and calm.

I don’t have much experience with Ruby but I’m amazed looking at the readme of how easy it is to get Jekyll going.

Yes, you don't need many knowledge about ruby to build a Jekyll Blog. There are many blog generator out there and you can have look (e.g, Hugo, Hexo).

I moved 4 of my business and family websites to jekyll this summer, the process isn't too terrible actually[1], especially if you're okay hosting on Github.

[1]: https://dsheldon.com/technology/github%20pages/jekyll/2019/0...

is the theme in GitHub? BTW your GitHub link is broken!

Thanks for catching that. I had to change my username recently :) The theme is in GitHub here: https://github.com/thelehhman/plainwhite-jekyll

Ruby is exceptionally beginner friendly

Nice! If I had to use Jekyll, I think I'd use that theme. Actually, I already use a similar custom theme.

Wow, that's cool, what theme you are using?

A theme I wrote with some Bootstrap 4. I am not a pro front-end developer/designer, but I guess it does the work for my personal blog!

(https://www.ecalamia.com/static/css/style.css)

Cool! Thanks for sharing.

Nice, these are always welcome.

A tiny remark - because post dates in the listing on the home page have different lengths (Mar is longer than Apr), titles to their right aren't correctly aligned.

Thanks for your feedback! That is a great found, will fix soon.

Good work! Does anyone have any other favorite minimalist themes for Hugo, Jekyll, Wordpress, Ghost, etc (or just HTML/CSS)?

There is a Hugo theme looks very like moving: https://github.com/joway/hugo-theme-yinyang.

[I already commented this in this post]

Here is my minimalist css microframework : https://concrete.style

There was a discussion only recently about "no-nonsense" themes for Jekyll et al.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266932

Note that people's definitions of what constitutes a minimalist/no-nonsense theme seem to differ, with some emphasizing appearance, others dependencies and elegance of the generated code.

I hope that users can realize that it is not the layout and interface of a blog that can enrich it, but the continuous sharing and high-quality content that never stops updating. That is what minimalist/no-nonsense, we should pay attention to the nature of things and keep moving.

Anyone have a favorite business blog theme for Jekyll? Specifically for a SaaS business blog.

Someone pretty please port this to Gatsby.

You mean Gatsby.js?

Yes.

https://www.gatsbyjs.org/

Cool, let me have a look and see if possible. Thank you.