min_night is a Hugo blog theme with a night-mode toggle and social sharing enhancements, forked from the Minimal theme by Nathan Day.
What is min_night?
min_night is a Hugo static site theme built on the Minimal theme (by calintat) and maintained by Nathan Day (nathancday). It takes Markdown content from Hugo's content directory and generates a blog with day and night display modes, OpenGraph and TwitterCard meta tags, syntax highlighting, and integrated comment options. The theme is designed for bloggers who want a clean, readable interface that works well in both light and dark environments, and a live demo is hosted at natedayta.com.
Key Features
min_night bundles the features of Minimal with new add-ons for night reading and social sharing. Its concrete capabilities include:
- Night-mode toggle — A JavaScript switch that flips the site between day and night palettes, using HTML5 storage to remember the visitor's preference.
- Social sharing meta tags — OpenGraph and TwitterCard tags are injected automatically; posts that define a
twitter_imgfront-matter parameter get a large-image summary card, while others fall back to the site logo. - Syntax highlighting — highlight.js is included by default, with configurable color palettes such as solarized-dark and a
highlightLanguageslist to control which languages receive special rendering. - Favicon set — Stock hex-sticker favicons ship with the theme, and the RealFaviconGenerator workflow is supported by dropping generated files into
static/img/favicon/. - Google Fonts and Font Awesome — A
fontparameter loads any Google Font, and Font Awesome v5 icons are available (free set by default, with a documented path for Pro users to swap in their CDN code). - Tags and categories pages — A list-page template adapted from Xmin renders tags and categories as hyperlinks, with tweaked list templates for posts and projects.
- Coral/Talk comment integration — Partial layouts are included for Coral (Talk v5+) and Talk v4 comment hosting, which can replace Hugo's built-in Disqus support.
- Bootstrap and GoogleAnalytics — Inherited from Minimal, the theme includes Bootstrap for responsive layout and Google Analytics support.
Who is it for?
min_night suits bloggers and technical writers who publish with Hugo and want a clean, readable theme with a dark mode. It is also a good fit for R users of blogdown, since the theme installs via new_site(theme = "nathancday/min_night"). Developers who like to tune a blog's look through configuration will appreciate the config.toml options for colors, fonts, and highlighting. Site owners who want better-looking links on social media benefit from the built-in OpenGraph and TwitterCard support.
What can you do with min_night?
min_night's configuration options let you customize appearance and sharing behavior without touching templates. For example:
- Bloggers who want a custom look: set the
accentandbackgroundColorparameters inconfig.tomlto change the navbar, footer, and night-mode background color. - Night readers: toggle the night-mode switch to a dark palette; the choice is stored with HTML5 storage.
- Sites that want rich link previews: add a
twitter_imgvalue in a post's front matter to get a large-image summary card on Twitter and OpenGraph previews elsewhere. - Developers who write code tutorials: enable syntax highlighting by setting
highlight = trueand choosing a style likesolarized-darkplus a list of languages.
How does min_night work?
min_night installs as a Git submodule: git submodule add https://github.com/nathancday/min_night.git themes/min_night, then you copy the exampleSite and run hugo server -D. The theme reads config.toml for parameters such as accent, backgroundColor, font, and highlight, and reads post front matter for twitter_img and description fields used by social cards. Updating the theme later is done with git submodule update --remote themes/min_night.
FAQ
Is min_night a free theme?
Yes, min_night is an open-source Hugo theme distributed on GitHub, and the repository is publicly accessible.
Does min_night require JavaScript for the night mode?
Yes, the night-mode toggle uses JavaScript and HTML5 storage, so visitors need JavaScript enabled to switch and remember their theme preference.
Can I use Disqus with min_night?
The theme supports Coral/Talk as an alternative to Disqus. If you enable a talkHost or coralHost, you should comment out or delete the disqusShortName field to avoid including multiple comment plugins at once.
How do I update the favicons?
Use RealFaviconGenerator to generate a new set, append /img/favicon/ to the download path, unzip the files, and drop them into static/img/favicon/. The site logo defaults to the 192x192 Android favicon but can be changed via the logo parameter.
What is the difference between Talk and Coral in this theme?
The theme includes partials for both Talk v4 (configured with talkHost) and Coral, formerly Talk v5 (configured with coralHost). Coral targets larger news-style sites and requires additional server infrastructure.
