Jekyll Hux Theme is a clean, MIT-licensed Jekyll theme for personal blogs, forked from the Huxpro design and extended with jekyll-search for client-side search. It turns a standard Jekyll site — with Markdown posts, a _config.yml file, and an about page — into a lightweight personal blog with sidebar, social links, and comment/analytics integrations.
What is Jekyll Hux Theme?
Jekyll Hux Theme is a static-site theme for Jekyll, the Ruby-based blogging engine. It takes Markdown posts and YAML configuration as input and produces a fully styled HTML blog as output, ready to be hosted on GitHub Pages or any static host. The theme is maintained by Stuart Hua on GitHub, and it is based on the Huxpro theme, adding the jekyll-search plugin for search functionality. The project is open source under the MIT license.
Key Features
- Clean, minimal design — The theme follows the Huxpro aesthetic: a clean, typography-focused layout with a header image, suitable for text-heavy personal blogs.
- Sidebar support — Enable the optional sidebar via the
sidebar: truesetting in_config.yml, which shows an about description and avatar on every page. - SNS integration — Configure links to GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, Zhihu, and LinkedIn directly in the YAML config, shown in the sidebar and header.
- Disqus comments — Plug in your Disqus username to add threaded comments to your blog posts.
- Analytics options — Supports both Google Analytics and Baidu Analytics by adding your tracking ID and domain to the config.
- Google Adsense — Add your AdSense client ID to enable ad placement.
- jekyll-search — Built-in integration with the jekyll-search plugin, offering a search interface for your posts.
- RSS support — A simple RSS feed can be enabled with the
RSS: truesetting. - jekyll-paginate and rouge — The installation requires
jekyll-paginatefor pagination androugefor syntax highlighting, both handled via Ruby gems.
Who is it for?
- Individual bloggers who want a clean, no-frills theme for a personal tech or life blog and are comfortable editing a Jekyll
_config.ymlfile by hand. - GitHub Pages users who want a lightweight theme that can be deployed by simply pushing a repository, since the theme is a standard Jekyll site.
- Developers who need a starting point for a project documentation or personal site that includes code highlighting via Rouge and pagination for long post lists.
What can you do with Jekyll Hux Theme?
- Start a technical blog — Publish Markdown posts about software development, then enable the sidebar, Disqus comments, and Google Analytics to get a full blogging setup without a database.
- Portfolio / About page — Use the included
/about/section, which supports both Chinese and English content through the_includes/about/zh.mdand_includes/about/en.mdfiles. - Customize social presence — Fill in your SNS usernames in the config to show icons for GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, Zhihu, LinkedIn, and more.
How does Jekyll Hux Theme work?
The theme works as a standard Jekyll site. First, clone the repository and install the required gems (jekyll-paginate and rouge). Next, edit _config.yml to set your site title, author, SEO description, URL, SNS accounts, analytics IDs, and sidebar options. Finally, customize the about page by editing the Markdown files in /_includes/about/. The theme then builds into a static site when you run jekyll serve or jekyll build.
FAQ
Is Jekyll Hux Theme free?
Yes, the project is licensed under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and distribute it freely as long as you retain the copyright notice.
Does Jekyll Hux Theme support comments?
Yes, it includes Disqus integration. Set your disqus_username in _config.yml to enable comments on your posts.
What analytics does Jekyll Hux Theme support?
It supports both Google Analytics and Baidu Analytics. You configure each through ga_track_id, ga_domain, and ba_track_id fields in the YAML config. Google Adsense is also available via google_ad_client.
Can I use Jekyll Hux Theme on GitHub Pages?
Since it is a standard Jekyll theme, you can host it on GitHub Pages. You'll need to push the repository to GitHub and configure the Pages service. Note that the current repository has only 2 stars, indicating limited adoption, so you may need to adapt the theme yourself.
What is the relationship to Huxpro?
Jekyll Hux Theme is a fork of the Huxpro theme by Hux (Huxpro on GitHub). It builds on that design and adds the jekyll-search integration, which is credited in the README.
Alternatives
- Huxpro — The original theme this project is based on, by Huxpro on GitHub. If you want the exact upstream design without the extra search integration, you can use that theme directly.
