Neo-HPSTR Jekyll Theme

Neo-HPSTR is a responsive, modern blog theme for Jekyll that packages a complete set of blog layouts, an animated navigation menu, and optional Disqus comments into a Ruby gem or installable boilerplate.

What is Neo-HPSTR Jekyll Theme?

Neo-HPSTR Jekyll Theme is an open-source blog template built for Jekyll 3.3 and newer. It provides responsive layouts for home, posts, pages, and a dark-post style, plus an animated topbar menu with drop-down support that changes color on scroll. The theme can be used as a Jekyll theme gem or by forking the repository and using it as a boilerplate. It was created by Aron Bordin and is available under the MIT License.

Key Features

• Responsive layouts — Includes home, post, page, and dark-post layouts that resize for mobile, tablet, and desktop, and degrade gracefully for Internet Explorer 8 and modern browsers.
• Animated topbar menu — A fixed navigation bar with drop-down submenus and a scroll-based color transition, controlled by SCSS variables such as $menu-height, $menu-top, and $menu-overflow.
• Disqus comments — Optional commenting on posts and pages by setting disqus_shortname in _config.yml; individual pages can disable comments with comments: false in front matter.
• Social sharing — Floating share links on the left edge of the screen and per-post share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, toggled by float_share and share: false.
• Open Graph and Twitter Cards — Social metadata tags in _includes/head.html enable rich link previews when posts are shared.
• Author panel — An author banner with avatar, name, and social links appears at the end of each post via _includes/author.html.
• Syntax highlighting — Code examples in posts are highlighted, as demonstrated in the included sample post 2016-12-01-code-highlighting-post.md.
• Built-in extras — Includes about.md, categories.html, search.html with a JSON search index, tags.html, a custom 404 page, and an RSS feed in feed.xml.

Who is it for?

• Jekyll bloggers — If you want a ready-made responsive blog without designing layouts from scratch, you can install the gem or fork the repo and start writing posts in _posts.
• Developers building a custom Jekyll site — Use the boilerplate route when you plan heavy changes; you get direct access to _layouts, _includes, and _sass, and the result can be hosted on GitHub Pages.
• Theme developers — The gem packaging and included Grunt build script that concatenates and minifies JavaScript make this a starting point for creating derived themes.

What can you do with it?

• Launch a personal blog — Set your name, avatar, and social URLs in _config.yml, then create posts using the provided sample posts or Octopress commands such as octopress new post "Post Title".
• Add a blog to an existing Jekyll site — Add theme: neo-hpstr-jekyll-theme to your _config.yml and gem "neo-hpstr-jekyll-theme" to your Gemfile to replace the default theme.
• Customize the design with SCSS — Edit _sass/_variables.scss to change the navbar height, navbar colors, body background, and typography without touching the layout files.

How does it work?

To install the theme gem, create a new Jekyll site with jekyll new, download the starter content from the demo/ folder, then run bundle install and bundle exec jekyll serve --watch. The boilerplate method involves forking the repo, deleting demo/ and screenshot.png, and running the same bundle commands. Jekyll processes the _layouts, _includes, and _sass directories to generate a static site.

FAQ

Is Neo-HPSTR Jekyll Theme free?

Yes, it is open source under the MIT License, so you can use it for personal and commercial projects at no cost.

How do I install Neo-HPSTR Jekyll Theme?

You can install it as a theme gem by adding gem "neo-hpstr-jekyll-theme" to your Gemfile and running bundle install, or fork the repository and use it as a boilerplate by running bundle exec jekyll serve --watch.

How do I enable Disqus comments?

Create a Disqus account, then set disqus_shortname in _config.yml to your site's shortname. Comments appear on all posts and pages by default; add comments: false to front matter to disable for a single page.

Can I use this theme on GitHub Pages?

Yes, if you fork the repo and use it as a boilerplate. GitHub Pages does not support Jekyll theme gems directly, so the boilerplate approach is required for GitHub Pages hosting.

How do I customize the navigation menu?

Edit the menu list in _config.yml with title and url pairs. Use submenu for drop-down items, or set type: 'categories' to list post categories automatically.