Ramium

Ramium is a Hugo theme for building feature-rich blogs, bundling Google search, Google Analytics, Disqus comments, social sharing, KaTeX math rendering, and ChordSheetJS support into a single static-site template.

What is Ramium?

Ramium is a modern Hugo theme designed for personal blogs and content sites. It takes Hugo content files—posts with frontmatter specifying tags, featured images, math, or chord sheet options—and generates a static, mobile-responsive website with SEO metadata. Created by rafed and distributed under the MIT license, the theme runs on the Hugo static site generator and is installed via git submodule.

Key Features

• Google search bar — Adds a search bar powered by Google Custom Search, configured with the googleSearch parameter in config.toml.
• Google Analytics — Built-in analytics integration; add your tracking code to the googleAnalytics setting.
• Social sharing bar — Share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit on each post.
• Disqus comments — Commenting enabled by setting disqusShortname in the site config.
• Admin panel — Shows a summary of total posts, tags, and sections (not a real admin UI; needs the addons directory to work).
• Math equations — KaTeX rendering is enabled per-page by setting math: true in a post's frontmatter.
• ChordSheetJS support — Adds the ChordSheetJS stylesheet via chordsheet: true for displaying lyrics with chords.
• SEO friendly — Includes Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata out of the box.
• Customizable navbar — Menu structure is defined in config.toml with support for nested items.
• Featured images — Posts can set an image field in frontmatter to show a header image.

Who is it for?

• Personal bloggers — Publish articles with comments, analytics, and social sharing without configuring multiple services.
• Tutorial writers — Use sections to group related articles, add code snippets, and enable math equations for technical content.
• Musicians — Write song lyrics with chord sheets using the built-in ChordSheetJS styling.
• Developers — Customize the theme's config.toml and frontmatter to adapt the layout to a Hugo site.

What can you do with Ramium?

• Start a blog quickly — Clone the examplesite structure, set your baseURL, disqusShortname, and googleAnalytics, then write posts in Markdown.
• Organize related posts — Use sections to create collections of tutorials or series on the same topic.
• Display math formulas — Set math: true in frontmatter to render LaTeX equations with KaTeX.
• Share content on social media — The built-in sharing bar lets readers post articles to Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit.

How does Ramium work?

• Install the theme by adding it as a git submodule in the themes directory.
• Follow the structure of the examplesite, including config.toml and the addons directory.
• Create posts with hugo new posts/filename.md and set frontmatter fields like image, math, or chordsheet.
• Build the site with Hugo; the theme generates static pages with the configured features.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Free and open source (MIT), includes many built-in integrations, mobile responsive, SEO-friendly, and supports math and chord sheets.
• Cons: The admin panel is only a read-only summary, not a real admin interface; the author notes BlogRa is better maintained and has a better UI, implying Ramium may receive less attention.

Pricing

Ramium is free and open source under the MIT license.

Alternatives

• BlogRa — A newer Hugo theme by the same author (rafed), advertised as having a better UI and better maintenance.

FAQ

How do I install Ramium?

Add the theme to your Hugo site as a git submodule: git submodule add https://github.com/rafed/ramium.git themes/ramium, then update with git submodule update --remote --merge. Set theme = "ramium" in config.toml.

Does Ramium support math equations?

Yes, KaTeX math rendering is supported. Set math = true in a post's frontmatter, or globally in config.toml, to enable it for that page.

How do I enable comments?

Set disqusShortname in your config.toml to your Disqus site's shortname. Disqus will then load comments on posts automatically.

Is Ramium free?

Yes, Ramium is released under the MIT license and is free to use for personal or commercial projects.

What is the admin panel in Ramium?

It is a lightweight page that summarizes the total number of posts, tags, and sections on your site. It is not a real content-management admin UI, and it requires the addons directory to function.