Ink

Ink is a crisp, minimal personal website and blog theme for the Hugo static site generator, forked from the Ezhil theme.

What is Ink?

Ink is a Hugo theme that converts Markdown content into a fast, static personal website with a blog index, recent posts, and static pages. Developed by knadh and released under the MIT license, it runs on any Hugo site, pulling content from Markdown files with TOML front matter and building to plain HTML. A live demo is available at https://hugo-ink.netlify.app. The theme is a fork of the Ezhil theme and follows Hugo's standard installation procedure.

Key Features

Ink bundles a focused set of features for a minimal blog, all configurable through Hugo's site parameters.

• Google Analytics integration — Add tracking to your site via Hugo configuration, with no extra templates required.
• Syntax highlighting — Code blocks are highlighted out of the box, making technical posts easier to read.
• Twitter cards and opengraph tags — Automatically generates social sharing metadata from content front matter for nicer link previews on Twitter and other platforms.
• Disqus comments — Drop-in comment support for posts by enabling Disqus in your site configuration.
• RSS feeds — Automatic RSS feed generation for the whole site, letting readers subscribe easily.
• Custom CSS/JS — Inject your own styles and scripts without editing theme templates, via Hugo's built-in hooks.
• Multilingual months support — A month.yaml data file maps month numbers to translated month names, working around Go's date localization limitations.

Who is it for?

Ink suits personal bloggers, developers, and writers who want a fast, minimalist static site without extra complexity.

• Personal bloggers — Set up a clean, text-first blog with minimal configuration and no JavaScript-heavy design.
• Developers — Fork and customize the theme because it is a small, readable codebase with a permissive MIT license and standard Hugo structure.
• Writers and journalists — Publish static articles and essays with RSS, social sharing metadata, and optional comments, all from simple Markdown.

What can you do with Ink?

With Ink you can publish a personal blog, create permanent static pages, integrate comments, and localize month names.

• Create a personal blog — Write Markdown posts; the theme outputs a homepage with recent posts, an archive listing, and an RSS feed.
• Add static pages — Set the front-matter field type to page to exclude an About or Contact page from recent-posts and all-posts listings.
• Enable discussion — Turn on Disqus comments to let readers leave feedback without any backend infrastructure.
• Localize dates — Use a month.yaml data file to display month names in different languages for non-English content.

How does Ink work?

Clone the repository into your Hugo site's themes directory, then configure your site to use the theme and follow Hugo's official setup guide. Use the site parameters mainSections and disableDisqusTypes to control which content types appear in recent posts and which types skip Disqus comments. To localize month names, drop a month.yaml into the data folder mapping integer month numbers to the desired language strings.

FAQ

Common questions about installing and using Ink are answered below.

Is Ink free?

Yes, Ink is open source and licensed under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and redistribute it freely for personal or commercial projects.

Does Ink support comments?

Yes, Ink integrates with Disqus comments. You can enable Disqus for posts via your Hugo site configuration, and you can disable it for specific content types using the disableDisqusTypes parameter.

Can I change the design of Ink?

Yes, the theme supports custom CSS and JS injection, and because it is a fork of the Ezhil theme with a simple structure, you can edit templates directly. The MIT license allows full customization and redistribution.

How do I translate month names in Ink?

Create a month.yaml file in the data folder of your Hugo site root, mapping month numbers 1 through 12 to the localized month names as strings. The theme will then use those names for post dates.

Is Ink affiliated with the Ezhil theme?

Ink is forked from the Ezhil theme, so it shares a similar minimal aesthetic but is a separate project maintained by knadh. Both are open source under the MIT license.