Minima

Minima is a clean, minimal Hugo theme for building fast static blogs and personal sites, originally ported from the Hexo Minima theme and distributed under the MIT license.

What is Minima?

Minima is a Hugo theme that turns markdown-based content into a static website with a clean reading layout. It runs on the Hugo static site generator (extended version required) and is maintained by Mivinci on GitHub. The theme accepts markdown posts with YAML front matter and outputs a fully static site with optional dark mode, multilingual pages, and client-side search. Its default code highlighting theme is VSCode Dark Plus.

Key Features

• Dark mode — Toggle between light and dark themes using the built-in theme switcher.
• Multilingual mode — Create sites in multiple languages, with full i18n support for interface strings.
• Code highlighting — Uses the VSCode Dark+ color scheme to render highlighted code blocks.
• Math rendering (KaTeX) — Render LaTeX math expressions on individual posts by enabling math: true in front matter.
• Flowchart diagrams (Mermaid) — Display Mermaid diagrams in posts when diagram: true is set in front matter.
• Comment systems — Integrates three comment providers: Disqus, Utterances, and Giscus; enable comments per post with comment: true.
• Search (FuseJS) — Client-side fuzzy search across site content with no server-side backend.
• Integrations — Google Analytics, RSS feeds, and a front-matter link attribute for redirecting a post to an external URL.

Who is Minima for?

• Personal bloggers — Publish markdown posts with minimal configuration and get a clean reading experience, dark mode, and RSS.
• Multilingual content creators — Use the multilingual mode to serve the same blog in several languages without duplicating theme files.
• Technical writers and developers — Enable per-post math and diagrams for technical articles, and choose from three comment systems.
• Developers who want a tiny theme — Minima runs with no build step beyond Hugo, so pages remain lightweight with no JavaScript framework dependencies.

What can you do with Minima?

• Write a math-heavy post — Set math: true in the post's YAML front matter and KaTeX will render the LaTeX formulas in that post.
• Add flowcharts to documentation — Enable diagram: true on a page to render Mermaid diagrams inside markdown.
• Redirect a post to an external article — Use the link front matter attribute to turn a post into a redirect to any URL.
• Let readers search your site — The built-in FuseJS search index makes all published content searchable from the theme's search box.

How does Minima work?

Install Hugo (extended version), then fetch the theme into your site's themes folder using either git submodule add --depth 1 https://github.com/mivinci/hugo-theme-minima.git themes/minima or git clone https://github.com/mivinci/hugo-theme-minima.git themes/minima. Configure your site by following the exampleSite/config.yaml, then write markdown posts with front matter and run hugo to build the static site.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Free and MIT licensed; includes dark mode, multilingual, KaTeX, Mermaid, search, analytics, and RSS out of the box; zero runtime JavaScript dependencies beyond optional libraries.
• Cons: The main branch is still in development, so UI and configuration may change between versions; Hugo extended is required for building.

FAQ

Is Minima free?

Yes, Minima is open source and MIT licensed, so you can use and modify it for personal or commercial projects without licensing fees.

Does Minima require Hugo extended?

Yes, the theme requires the extended version of Hugo because of its Sass/SCSS processing. The standard Hugo binary will not build the theme correctly.

Which comment systems does Minima support?

Minima supports three comment systems: Disqus, Utterances, and Giscus. Enable them globally or per post with the comment: true front matter value.

How do I enable math on a post?

Add math: true to the YAML front matter of the individual post where you want KaTeX to render LaTeX expressions. Similarly, diagram: true enables Mermaid diagrams.

Does Minima have search?

Yes, Minima uses FuseJS to provide client-side fuzzy search. All published content becomes searchable without needing a separate search service.