Gokarna

Gokarna is a minimal, opinionated Hugo theme for building fast, content-focused blogs and personal sites, earning a 100% Google Lighthouse performance score.

What is Gokarna?

Gokarna is an open-source Hugo theme created by Yash Mehrotra and Avijit Gupta, with major contributions from James Davidson, David Kröll, and Mansoor Barri. It takes standard Hugo content — Markdown posts, front matter, and site configuration — and renders a static site featuring light and dark modes, dedicated post and list page layouts, and an auto-generated RSS feed. The theme is distributed under the GNU GPLv3 license and takes its name from the small beach town of Gokarna on the west coast of India.

Key Features

• Light and dark modes — The theme ships with both color schemes, as shown in the homepage, post, and list page screenshots.
• Feather and Simple icons — Choose between two icon sets for the homepage and navigation via theme configuration.
• KaTeX math typesetting — Render mathematical notation in posts without a heavy JavaScript library.
• Syntax highlighting — Code blocks are highlighted, and the color scheme can be swapped from the advanced documentation.
• Custom HTML, JavaScript, and CSS — Inject arbitrary code into the head and footer for analytics, widgets, or styling tweaks.
• Configurable table of contents — Enable or disable a TOC on individual posts from front matter.
• Translations — Includes Español, Deutsch, Français, Polski, Português Brasileiro, Русский, and 正體字 translation files, with instructions for adding more.
• Google Lato fonts — The theme uses the Lato typeface for its clean typography.

Who is it for?

Bloggers who want a no-frills layout that loads quickly can use Gokarna for personal writing. Developers comfortable with Hugo's static-site workflow benefit from its minimal configuration syntax and direct access to theme internals for customization. Non-English authors can publish in multiple languages using the included i18n tables or by creating their own translation files.

What can you do with Gokarna?

• Bloggers: publish Markdown posts and get a clean reading experience with a configurable TOC and syntax-highlighted code.
• Developers: add custom JavaScript and CSS through head/footer parameters to integrate analytics or third-party scripts.
• Multilingual authors: switch the site language by changing languageCode in Hugo's config, using one of the seven shipped translations.

How does Gokarna work?

Install it as a Hugo submodule with git submodule add https://github.com/gokarna-theme/gokarna-hugo.git themes/gokarna, then update your site configuration to reference the theme. The theme reads standard Hugo content files and config parameters, so you build the site with the normal hugo command. A live demo is available at https://gokarna-hugo.netlify.app.

FAQ

Is Gokarna free?

Yes, Gokarna is open source under the GNU GPLv3 license, so you can use and modify it freely for personal or commercial projects.

Does Gokarna support dark mode?

Yes, the theme includes both light and dark modes, and the official screenshots show the homepage, post, and list pages in each scheme.

Can I customize the accent color?

Yes, the documentation describes how to define the site's accent color, which changes hyperlinks and icons on the site.

What languages are available?

Gokarna ships with translations for Spanish/Catalan, German, French, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Traditional Chinese; you can also add other languages with Hugo's translation tables.

Is Gokarna SEO-friendly?

The theme reports a 100% Google Lighthouse score and includes an auto-generated RSS feed, supporting standard SEO practices.