Hello Friend 4s3ti

Hello Friend 4s3ti is a Hugo blog theme that merges features from hello-friend-ng and hello-friend to create a customizable, responsive personal blog template with dark/light mode and configurable FontAwesome icons.

What is Hello Friend 4s3ti?

Hello Friend 4s3ti is a Hugo theme for personal blogs and simple content sites. It takes standard Hugo content written in Markdown with front matter and renders a fully static, responsive website with automatic dark/light theming, PrismJS code highlighting, and built-in audio support for posts. The theme is maintained by GitHub user 4s3ti (also known as coolapso) and is available on GitHub under the MIT License.

The theme is a fork and combination of two existing Hugo themes: hello-friend-ng and the original hello-friend. Its most significant change over those predecessors is the way FontAwesome is handled: you can choose exactly which icon sets to load (brands, solid, regular), load all of them, or replace the bundled setup with your own FontAwesome kit URL. Everything is configured through Hugo's standard configuration files, and no Node.js toolchain is required to edit or build the theme.

Key Features

• Dark/light mode — the theme automatically respects the visitor's system color preference and also lets users manually toggle between dark and light themes.
• Inter font — default typography uses the Inter font by Rasmus Andersson, which is designed for improved readability on screens.
• PrismJS code highlighting — code blocks in Markdown get syntax highlighting out of the box via PrismJS, with no extra shortcode needed.
• Configurable FontAwesome icons — load all FontAwesome icons, only specific sets (brands, solid, regular), or provide a custom kit URL for the icon library.
• Social icons and sharing buttons — social profile links can be placed in the footer or the main content area, and optional sharing buttons depend on FontAwesome.
• Multilingual menu with flags — a built-in language switcher shows alternative languages; with exactly two languages it toggles between them directly instead of using a submenu.
• Audio support for posts — adding an audio field to a post's front matter embeds an audio player for that article.
• Commento integration — commenting is supported through Commento, a privacy-focused alternative to Disqus.

Who is it for?

• Personal bloggers — publish a clean, readable blog with Hugo and get dark/light mode, social links, and audio posts without writing custom code.
• Developers — edit the theme with plain Hugo tooling; there is no Node.js or build step, so customizing templates and styles is straightforward.
• Multilingual authors — use the built-in language menu with flags to serve content in multiple languages, with a direct switch when only two languages are configured.
• Technical writers — benefit from PrismJS syntax highlighting for code examples, plus the ability to include audio recordings alongside posts.

What can you do with Hello Friend 4s3ti?

• Podcasters: attach an audio file to a blog post by setting audio in the front matter, turning the post into a podcast-style entry with a built-in player.
• Social media managers: configure social icons in the footer or main content area, and enable sharing buttons to let readers spread posts across networks.
• Minimalist site owners: disable read-other-posts links, hide page titles on single pages, and choose a text-based "read more" link instead of a button for a cleaner reading experience.
• Multilingual site maintainers: rely on the built-in language menu with flag indicators to switch visitors between language versions of the site.

How does Hello Friend 4s3ti work?

Install the theme by cloning the repository into your Hugo project's themes/hello-4s3ti directory, or add it as a git submodule to receive updates. Then copy the example configuration from the exampleSite folder, adjust parameters like homeSubtitle and enableSharingButtons, and start writing standard Markdown posts. The theme renders the static site using Hugo's normal build process; front matter fields such as audio, hideTitle, and hidelanguage control per-post behavior.

Pricing

Hello Friend 4s3ti is free and open source, released under the MIT License. You can use it for personal or commercial projects without paying a license fee, and the source code is available on GitHub.

Alternatives

Two closely related themes are direct alternatives: the original hello-friend theme, which is simpler and served as a base, and hello-friend-ng, which adds more features and is the other parent of this fork.

FAQ

Is Hello Friend 4s3ti free?

Yes, the theme is released under the MIT License, which means it is free to use, modify, and distribute, including in commercial projects. There are no paid tiers or premium features.

Does Hello Friend 4s3ti require Node.js?

No. The theme is built on Hugo and uses no Node.js dependencies, so you can edit templates, styles, and configuration with just Hugo's tooling.

How do I add audio to a post?

Add an audio field to the post's front matter with the path to the audio file, for example audio: path/to/file.mp3. The theme then embeds an audio player on that post.

How do I configure FontAwesome?

In the theme configuration, set fontAwesome.all = true to load every icon, or set fontAwesome.brands, fontAwesome.solid, and fontAwesome.regular to true individually. You can also provide a custom fontAwesome.kitURL to load your own FontAwesome kit.

What is the difference between Hello Friend 4s3ti and the original hello-friend?

Hello Friend 4s3ti adds configurable FontAwesome loading, a multilingual menu with flags, optional overlay on the background, control over page titles on single pages, social icons in more locations, and built-in audio support, none of which appear in the original hello-friend.