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RSimple

A clean, elegant Hugo blog theme with a gruvbox color scheme.

About this template

RSimple is a Hugo blog theme that applies the gruvbox color scheme to produce a clean, minimal layout for personal blogs and documentation sites.

What is RSimple?

RSimple is an open-source theme for the Hugo static site generator, created by Rijo Thomas. It uses the gruvbox colorscheme designed by Pavel Pertsev to give blog content a warm, retro-contrast look. The theme takes a standard Hugo site structure as input and outputs a static blog with a single-column reading layout. It is distributed under the MIT license, so it can be freely reused and modified.

Key Features

  • Gruvbox color scheme — The theme is built around the popular gruvbox palette, which provides warm, high-contrast colors for text and background.
  • Hugo-based — Works as a standard Hugo theme; you install it by cloning the repository into the themes folder and setting the theme option in config.toml.
  • Example site included — The exampleSite directory contains a sample config.toml and demo content, so you can see how the theme is configured before building your own site.
  • Live demo on Netlify — A hosted demo at https://rsimple-theme.netlify.app/ shows the theme in action.
  • MIT licensed — The theme is free to use, modify, and redistribute, with no restrictions beyond preserving the license file.
  • Minimal design — The layout is intentionally simple and clean, focusing on readability for long-form blog posts.

Who is RSimple for?

  • Bloggers using Hugo — People who want a straightforward, attractive theme for a personal blog without heavy design overhead.
  • Developers who like gruvbox — Users who already use the gruvbox color scheme in their editors and want their website to match their terminal aesthetic.
  • Hugo beginners — The included example configuration and content make it easy to get a first Hugo site running quickly.

What can you do with RSimple?

  • Personal blog: Set up a personal blog with a clean layout and gruvbox color palette by cloning the theme and copying the example config.
  • Documentation site: Use the exampleSite content structure to build a small documentation hub, since the theme supports standard Hugo content types.
  • Customization practice: Because it is MIT licensed and minimal, it is a good base for learning how to customize Hugo themes.

How does RSimple work?

Installation follows the typical Hugo theme workflow: create a themes directory, clone the repository from GitHub, and set the theme option to rsimple in config.toml. The exampleSite folder provides a ready-to-use config file and demo content that you can copy to your site root to see the theme in action immediately.

screenshot of RSimple on template0.com