Hugo Themes Suggestions

Using Themes
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I too would really like more and better Hugo themes, but I find myself continually disappointed. However, I was really pleased recently to see a port of a Wordpress theme make it into the catalog. Wordpress is HUGE out there, and some more WP themes would be a great addition. I don’t want to be critical, but LOL, I think that lack of a few really great Hugo themes is a big weakness. If I’m wrong, please point us to those themes as I would be eager to try them.

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I should mention a thought also. It would be really nice to have a star rating for each theme. This would help a lot when deciding between a large collection of themes. Thanks a lot.

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These are FREE and Open Source Themes authored by people from their spare time.

This is not a popularity contest.

Well then, may I suggest that instead of sharing your disappointment with us, why don’t you author a Hugo theme the way you need it. Also feel free to submit it in the Hugo Themes repository and I will be more than happy to review it for ya.

P.S. I moved your posts from the other topic because they were OT there since that was a topic discussing Hugo theme types.

1 Like
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Oh, okay. I appreciate that the themes are made by people in their free time. I wasn’t intentionally criticising, but offering what I thought was a constructive suggestion by a Hugo fan.

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It was not. But you do have an opportunity to provide constructive feedback: https://themes.gohugo.io/

Here’s the thing:

Okay, but how do you handle that in other areas of life? We don’t know what you mean. Mostly because just as you don’t ask the developers of WordPress about their themes, this isn’t the place to improve the themes. I propose contacting a given theme author and assisting them in making their theme better.

Please explain more about this. What is happening to our project, and how can we prevent this weakness from adversely affecting us? We need to address any weakness, immediately. Please clarify. :slight_smile:

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First, I want to acknowledge the amazing quality, pace, and functionality of all Hugo contributors. Including the theme developers. That said, I think it is time to evolve the way themes are discovered. The Hugo ecosystem has grown so much that it is getting more difficult to identify good candidate themes - that is starting points - both for new users, infoprenuers, and advanced users who may be using Hugo in website/design businesses.

A good approach would be to further categorize using more formal taxonomies, in addition to the existing tags, that describe a theme. For me, I have wanted to identify themes by the following criteria:

  • Which themes are based on which generation of Hugo? For example, which themes are a good example based on bundles? Which ones support pipes? Good examples with page resources? Which ones are good for starting your own theme but with enough to get started? For older themes, which versions have been updated to reflect the evolution of Hugo?

  • When was it last updated? with the changes made

  • What is the best Hugo version for the theme?

  • What theme is designed to be resilient to changes in Hugo?

  • Which ones are blog only? Web only? Blog and Web combined?

  • Does it use a CSS framework? Which one? Custom? Bare bones for your own custom?

  • Does it use SASS and Pipes?

  • What are the main functionality supported: e.g., podcasts, blogs, tutorials, courses …

  • Does it support JSON-LD?

  • Does it have a website with more advanced functionality like “Academic” with its one minute build and deploy to Netlify? Or does it have that in the themes directory version? Or need to figure it out yourself?

  • what is a good theme to use as an example for creating the different parts of my custom site (e.g., partials, pagenation, …)?

There are a variety of descriptive metadata and categories that could be adopted or defined to organize themes to enable richer filtering and browsing.

I don’t have the programming skill to pull that off in the themes section but do have the analysis, category management, data modeling, and metadata skills to help. Any interest in a more metadata driven “themes” site? Thoughts?

P.S. this could all be said about snippets, templates, and really any other kind of content we all might want to find more easily. And, since it is all a volunteer effort, there would need to be additional guidance, workflows, and responsibilities around the curation of the content. Is it worth it yet?

1 Like
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I think pointyfar’s link is excellent for many of these requirements.

pointyfar

7d

epogrebnyak:

I was thinking about parsing the repo of themes and making a dataset of theme properties

FWIW, I have something like that, currently with the focus on filtering by tags, Hugo version, license, and github stars, sortable by date updated, stars, and name. :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Ah, I went down that rabbit hole and really was able to filter and browse well! And having suffered many sessions of one tag filtering, this was a great joy. Yes, I think pointyfar’s gone a long way towards satisfying the requirements and built a good base to extend upon as requirements emerge. Be good if this could become part of the official “Themes” front end.

Good work, pointyfar. I will keep poking around and provide any feedback I may have as I work within it. What is the best way to provide feedback for you?

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Thanks. I am often lurking around here, otherwise feel free to start an issue on the Github repo linked somewhere on that page.

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my thoughts and proposals on parts of the same general issue : Theme standardization and "compatible" comments