Minimal Mistakes RTL is a full right-to-left (RTL) Jekyll theme for building a personal site, blog, project documentation, or portfolio, adapted from the popular Minimal Mistakes theme with Persian localization built in.
What is Minimal Mistakes RTL?
Minimal Mistakes RTL is a Persian/Farsi-ized fork of the widely used Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme, with all extra files removed to keep the project focused. It runs on Jekyll, the Ruby-based static site generator, and takes standard Jekyll content — posts written in Markdown in the _posts folder, pages in the _pages folder, and site-wide configuration in _config.yml — and produces a completely static website with an RTL layout. The theme is designed for Persian speakers who want a ready-to-use Jekyll setup without manually adding RTL support or font loading.
Key Features
- Full RTL support — the layout, typography, and navigation are tuned for right-to-left languages, so Persian and Arabic content displays correctly without extra configuration.
- Vazir and Sahel fonts — the site uses the Vazir font for interface text and the Sahel font for post content, both available as open-source Persian typefaces from Rastikerdar.
- Minimal Mistakes base — inherits the design and component structure of the original Minimal Mistakes theme, including its responsive layout and content-focused aesthetic.
- Clean file structure — extra files from the original repository have been removed, leaving only what is needed to run a Persian site.
- UI text customization — interface strings are centralized in the
_data/ui-text.ymlfile, making it easy to translate or adjust every label without touching templates. - Customizable pages — the About, Contact, and 404 pages live in the
_pagesfolder and can be edited directly as Markdown. - Standard Jekyll posts — new posts are added by creating a file named
yyyy-mm-dd-post-name.mdin the_postsfolder, following Jekyll's conventional naming.
Who is it for?
- Persian-speaking bloggers who want a free, simple Jekyll blog with RTL text and Persian fonts out of the box.
- Developers building personal sites who want to avoid setting up RTL CSS and font loading manually and can rely on a maintained fork.
- Technical writers who need to publish project documentation in Farsi using a static site generator and the familiar Minimal Mistakes layout.
- Portfolio owners who want a clean, fast site that presents work in a right-to-left format.
What can you do with it?
- Create a bilingual or Persian blog: write posts in Markdown, save them with a date prefix, and publish a static blog with a readable RTL design.
- Set up a documentation site: use the inherited Minimal Mistakes structure to present API docs or project guides in Persian.
- Build a personal portfolio: customize the About page and add project pages in
_pagesto showcase work in an RTL layout. - Self-host with any Jekyll-compatible host: since it runs on Jekyll, you can deploy to GitHub Pages, Netlify, or any static host that builds Ruby projects.
How does Minimal Mistakes RTL work?
After obtaining the theme, you edit _config.yml to set site metadata, then adjust _data/ui-text.yml to change any Persian interface wording. Pages such as About and Contact are edited in the _pages folder, and new posts are written as Markdown files in _posts using the yyyy-mm-dd-post-name.md naming convention. The original Minimal Mistakes docs and test folders, linked in the README, provide further examples of posts and page templates.
Alternatives
- Minimal Mistakes — the original English theme by Michael Rose, which this RTL fork is based on; it does not include built-in Persian fonts or RTL layout adjustments.
