Trio

Trio is a content-focused, responsive Jekyll theme by Ankur Gupta that turns Markdown posts into a clean static blog with full-text search, Disqus comments, and nine color themes.

What is Trio?

Trio is a Jekyll theme built for simple, content-focused blogs. It accepts Markdown files and generates a static, mobile-friendly website with an RSS feed, a 404 page, and paginated post lists. The theme runs on any Jekyll installation, is open-sourced under the MIT license, and was created by Ankur Gupta, with a live demo at perfectlyrandom.org/trio.

Key Features

• Full-text search — Integrates the Simple-Jekyll-Search library so visitors can search posts without a third-party search service.
• Nine color themes — Ships with one default and eight from Lanyon Color Themes; switch by editing the $theme-color variable in _sass/_colors.scss.
• Post sharing buttons — Includes built-in buttons for sharing posts on social platforms.
• Markdown rendering enhancements — Supports syntax highlighting, fenced code blocks, tables, GitHub gists, and blockquotes.
• Disqus integration — Provides drop-in comment support for posts.
• RSS feed — Automatically generates an RSS feed for subscribers.
• Paginated posts — Breaks the blog list into paginated pages.
• Favicon generation script — Includes a bash script that uses ImageMagick's convert to create custom favicons with adjustable colors and lettering.

Who is it for?

• Bloggers and writers who want a minimalist, content-first Jekyll site with minimal design overhead.
• Developers who need a base theme with built-in search and comments and want to customize the color scheme through a single SCSS variable.
• Portfolio owners who want a responsive, mobile-friendly layout for a personal project and are comfortable with Jekyll's static workflow.

What can you do with Trio?

• Personal bloggers: Publish Markdown posts and get a clean, responsive blog with RSS and pagination out of the box.
• Technical writers: Present code snippets with syntax highlighting and embed GitHub gists for additional context.
• Site owners: Enable Disqus comments and full-text search so readers can interact with content and find posts quickly.

How does Trio work?

Trio is a standard Jekyll theme. After setting up Jekyll, clone the repository and add Markdown files to the _posts directory, then run jekyll build. To change the color theme, edit the $theme-color variable in _sass/_colors.scss; to generate favicons, run the included create-favicon.sh script, which requires ImageMagick.

Pros and cons

• Pro: Open source under the MIT license, so it is free to use and modify.
• Pro: Full-text search and Disqus integration are included with no extra setup beyond configuration.
• Pro: Nine color themes plus a favicon script reduce custom design work.
• Con: The author notes the SCSS code may be "superfluous or overkill" and that they are not an SCSS expert, so the stylesheet might benefit from cleanup.

Alternatives

• Solo — a Jekyll theme by Shu Uesugi that provided the HTML/CSS for posts.
• Lanyon and Hyde — Poole themes by Mark Otto that contributed the color themes Trio uses.
• Pixyll — a Jekyll theme by John Otander that influenced Trio's design principles.

Pricing

Trio is free to use under the MIT open-source license. No paid tiers or premium features are listed.

FAQ

Is Trio free?

Yes, Trio is open-sourced under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and distribute it freely for personal or commercial projects.

How do I change the color theme?

Edit the $theme-color variable in the _sass/_colors.scss file. Trio includes nine predefined colors; the default is red, defined as $base-08.

Does Trio support search?

Yes, it includes full-text search powered by Simple-Jekyll-Search, so visitors can search post content without an external search service.

How do I create favicons?

Use the included create-favicon.sh bash script, which relies on ImageMagick's convert command. You can modify the script to change colors and lettering.

Who made Trio?

Trio was created by Ankur Gupta and is maintained on GitHub. The project page also credits inspiration from Solo, Lanyon, Hyde, and Pixyll.