Red Rose is a dark, fully responsive Hugo theme for blogs and portfolios, built on Bootstrap 5.2 and providing About, Tags, and List pages out of the box. The theme is released under the MIT License and maintained by the GitHub user httpsecure, who describes it as a "Hugo Blog Portofolio Dark theme."
What is Red Rose?
Red Rose is a Hugo theme that turns Markdown content into a dark-styled blog or portfolio website. It takes standard Hugo site content — posts, tags, and author information — and renders it into a responsive layout using Bootstrap 5.2 as its CSS foundation. The theme includes About, Tags, and List templates, so a basic site structure is ready immediately after installation. A live demo is hosted at red-rose.netlify.app, with sample text from Wikipedia and flower images from Unsplash.
Key Features
- Fully responsive layout — pages adapt to mobile, tablet, and desktop viewports using Bootstrap 5.2's grid system.
- Built-in page types — dedicated templates for About, Tags, and List pages cover the standard Hugo blog structure.
- Local Bootstrap by default — development uses a local copy of Bootstrap 5.2; for production you can swap in the Bootstrap CDN by editing the head.html partial.
- Local font — the theme bundles its own font, so no external font requests are needed for the default look.
- Code highlighting with Chroma — Hugo's built-in syntax highlighter works out of the box; the theme configures the solarized-dark256 style, which you can change using the Chroma playground at swapoff.org/chroma/playground.
- Easy customization — theme files are straightforward to edit, and the README points to Hugo's quick-start guide for setup.
- MIT License — free to use, modify, and redistribute for personal or commercial projects.
Who is it for?
Red Rose suits developers who already know Hugo and want a no-frills dark theme to launch a blog or portfolio quickly. Hugo beginners can copy the example site and follow the Hugo quick-start guide to see a complete dark site in a few minutes. Freelancers and designers can use the About and List pages to present their work and bio without building a custom layout. Developers who prefer local assets can rely on the local Bootstrap and font for offline or network-restricted builds.
What can you do with Red Rose?
- Bloggers: publish Markdown posts and have them rendered with Chroma syntax highlighting in the solarized-dark256 style.
- Portfolio owners: use the List and About pages to showcase projects and introduce yourself, with demo images from Unsplash as placeholders.
- Theme tinkerers: override the Bootstrap CSS source or switch to the CDN link provided in the README to change the styling system without redesigning layouts.
FAQ
Is Red Rose free?
Yes. Red Rose is released under the MIT License, so you can use it for personal or commercial projects free of charge and even modify it.
Does Red Rose require the extended version of Hugo?
The README notes that if you install Hugo manually, you must install the Hugo extended version. On Debian/Ubuntu, installing Hugo from the repository includes libsass1, which satisfies the requirement.
What styling framework does Red Rose use?
Red Rose uses Bootstrap 5.2. During development it uses a local Bootstrap file, and for production you can add the Bootstrap 5.2.1 CDN link to head.html.
Where is the demo site?
The live demo is at red-rose.netlify.app. The demo content uses text from Wikipedia and flower images from Unsplash, and the theme is also available on GitHub at github.com/httpsecure/hugo-theme-red-rose.
Does the theme support code highlighting?
Yes. It relies on Hugo's built-in Chroma highlighter. You wrap code in triple backticks with a language identifier, and the output is styled with the solarized-dark256 color scheme.
