Hugo Theme Diary is a Hugo blog theme, ported from SumiMakito's hexo-theme-Journal, that turns a static Hugo site into a personal journal-style blog with comment integrations, dark mode, and six languages.
What is Hugo Theme Diary?
Hugo Theme Diary is an open-source theme for the Hugo static site generator, released under the MIT license at version 1.3.0. It takes Markdown-based Hugo content as input and produces a responsive blog with an index page, post pages, a sidebar, and a table of contents. The theme was ported by AmazingRise from the hexo-theme-Journal design and is distributed via GitHub with an example site.
Key Features
- Comment service support — integrates Gitalk, LiveRe, Disqus, Waline, and Twikoo so readers can leave comments without locking into one provider.
- Dark mode — switches automatically or manually, with a dedicated dark-mode screenshot in the repo.
- Table of contents with scroll spy — highlights the current section as readers scroll through long posts.
- LaTeX support — MathJax is included but disabled by default; enable it per site for math-heavy writing.
- Multilingual UI — ships with English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese translations.
- Mobile-adaptive layout — includes a drawer-style navigation for phones and scales to widescreen displays.
- Third-party integrations — Google Analytics, Google Site Verification, Google Search box, and RSS feed are documented in the wiki.
- Lightweight scripts — version 1.3.0 removed jQuery and other redundant scripts to improve page performance.
Who is it for?
- Personal bloggers who want a quiet, journal-like reading experience with minimal decoration.
- Hugo developers looking for a maintained port of the Journal theme with a wiki covering i18n, color schemes, and fonts.
- Multilingual writers who need built-in translations and per-post language metadata.
- Academic or technical writers who want optional LaTeX rendering inside posts.
Use cases
- Journaling online: publish short 'moments' posts with a date-focused layout and comment threads via Waline or Twikoo.
- Bilingual blog: use the i18n system to serve English and Chinese readers from the same Hugo site.
- Math-oriented notes: enable MathJax in config to typeset equations in posts without adding external scripts.
How does Hugo Theme Diary work?
Installation uses Git submodules: from the root of your Hugo site, run git submodule add https://github.com/AmazingRise/hugo-theme-diary.git themes/diary, then update with git submodule update --remote --merge. A demo site is provided under themes/diary/exampleSite; launch it with hugo server --themesDir ../...
FAQ
Is Hugo Theme Diary free?
Yes. The theme is open source under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and redistribute it freely, including in commercial projects.
Which comment services are supported?
The theme supports Gitalk, LiveRe, Disqus, Waline, and Twikoo. Configuration for each is documented in the project wiki's Comment Services page.
Can I change the color scheme and fonts?
Yes. The wiki includes instructions for altering the color scheme, code highlight style, font family, and reading-time display through the config file.
