Chunky Poster is a Hugo blog theme built on Bootstrap 4, designed to render Markdown content as a responsive blog with multi-author pages, image galleries, and optional Prism syntax highlighting.
What is Chunky Poster?
Chunky Poster is an open-source Hugo theme inspired by the Prisma blog, offering a simple layout for publishing blog posts. It takes Hugo content written in Markdown and outputs a static website with automatic image processing, a multi-author taxonomy, and configurable integrations like Prism for code highlighting and Commento for comments. The theme is maintained by puresyntax71 and released under the MIT license.
Key Features
- Multi-author support — Uses the "author" taxonomy to create author pages under content/authors; assign authors to posts via the
authorsfront matter field, and the first image in the author's page resources becomes their avatar. - Image processing and cover images — Posts accept an
imagesfront matter list; images stored under content/images with a headless index.md are processed by Hugo, and the first listed image acts as the post cover. - Prism syntax highlighting — Optional integration with PrismJS; enable it under params.prismJS and choose a theme such as "okaidia".
- Commento comments — Built-in support for Commento; configure by setting params.commento.enable to true and providing the Commento URL.
- Image gallery via ekko-lightbox — The figure shortcode integrates ekko-lightbox, allowing simple lightbox galleries inside posts.
- LazyLoad for images — Images are loaded lazily to improve page performance.
- Basic internationalization (i18n) — The theme includes basic i18n support so you can translate interface strings.
- Share buttons — Optional social share buttons can be enabled globally and disabled per post via front matter.
- Customizable SCSS — Styling uses Bootstrap 4 with SCSS; override variables in
_variables.scssand edit the main stylesheet atsrc/scss/chunky-poster.scss.
Who is it for?
- Hugo bloggers who want a ready-made Bootstrap-based blog layout without writing HTML and CSS from scratch.
- Multi-author teams that need per-author profile pages and consistent attribution on posts.
- Technical writers and developers who want syntax highlighting with Prism and a third-party comment system like Commento.
- Hugo developers who want a theme they can fork and customize with a Yarn-based build process (
yarn watchandyarn build).
What can you do with Chunky Poster?
- Indie bloggers: publish Markdown posts with cover images, lazy loading, and a responsive layout that adapts to mobile devices.
- Tech blogs: enable Prism to highlight code snippets in a choice of themes, and set up Commento for reader comments.
- Multi-author publications: create author pages under the
authorstaxonomy, assign posts to authors, and display author avatars and social links. - Photo-heavy blogs: use the image gallery with the figure shortcode to embed lightbox photo galleries inside posts.
How does Chunky Poster work?
Installation is straightforward: clone the repository into your Hugo site's themes folder and copy the configuration from exampleSite/config.toml. Authors are set up by adding the "author" taxonomy, creating pages under content/authors, and referencing authors in post front matter. Content images are placed in content/images with a headless index.md, and the first image in a post's images list becomes the cover. To customize, fork the project and run yarn watch during development; for production, run yarn build to regenerate assets.
Pricing
Chunky Poster is free and open source under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and redistribute it without licensing fees.
Alternatives
Other Hugo blog themes you might consider are hugo-theme-even, CleanWhite, and Blank, all of which have influenced this theme's structure.
FAQ
Is Chunky Poster free?
Yes, Chunky Poster is released under the MIT license, meaning it is free to use for personal and commercial projects. You can modify and redistribute it as long as you retain the original copyright notice.
Does Chunky Poster support multiple authors?
Yes. It includes a multi-author feature based on the "author" taxonomy. You create author pages under content/authors, set metadata like Twitter handle and images, and then assign authors to posts using the authors field in front matter.
How do I enable Prism syntax highlighting?
In your site's configuration file, add a [params.prismJS] section, set enable to true, and choose a theme by setting the theme value, for example "okaidia". This activates Prism on your posts.
How do I set up Commento comments?
Under [params.commento], set enable to true and provide your Commento URL in the url field. This adds the Commento commenting widget to your posts.
Can I use an image gallery in my posts?
Yes, the theme includes an image gallery feature using the ekko-lightbox library and the figure shortcode. Simply use the figure shortcode with multiple images to create a lightbox gallery.
