Typecho-Butterfly is a Typecho theme that ports the Hexo Butterfly theme to Typecho, delivering the same card-based design and advanced features to dynamic blogs.
What is Typecho-Butterfly?
Typecho-Butterfly is a port of the popular Hexo Butterfly theme for the Typecho blogging platform. It takes Markdown posts from a Typecho blog and renders them through a card-based, two-column, responsive layout with night mode, Pjax page transitions, and more than a dozen built-in features that normally require third-party plugins or services on Hexo. It requires PHP 7.4 or higher (the author develops on PHP 8.2) and is compatible with Typecho versions starting from 1.2.0. The theme is open source, maintained by the GitHub user wehaox, and accepts community contributions through issues and pull requests.
Key Features
- Card-based, two-column responsive layout — Designed for desktop and mobile, with a sidebar that can be shown or hidden from the Typecho admin panel.
- Pjax and night mode — Smooth page transitions without full reloads, plus a dark mode toggle for readers.
- Content protection — Supports article encryption, full-site encryption or access restriction, comment verification via Google reCAPTCHA or hCaptcha, and reply-to-see content inside articles.
- Search, navigation, and reading tools — Native local search, table of contents on desktop and mobile, a built-in 404 page, article reading mode, simplified/traditional Chinese conversion, word count, related posts, and expired article reminders.
- Code block enhancements — Code blocks show the language, can be collapsed or expanded, offer a copy button, and support automatic line wrapping.
- Media and interaction — Fancybox image lightbox, image lazy loading, Snackbar popups, mouse click effects (fireworks or hearts), and a real-time online visitor count (may not work on some virtual hosts).
- Backend customization — Change site colors, set pinned posts, manage friend links with custom HTML, and insert Google ads or manual ad positions directly from the admin panel.
- Migration-friendly for Hexo users — Existing Butterfly users can reuse the original Butterfly CSS files, and since posts stay in Markdown, moving from Hexo is straightforward.
Who is the theme for?
- Hexo bloggers switching to Typecho — They can move their Markdown posts and keep the Butterfly look by reusing the original CSS.
- Bloggers who want dynamic features without third-party APIs — Online editing, search, encryption, pinning, and comment verification work out of the box on Typecho.
- Theme developers — The open-source codebase is customizable and accepts pull requests to add new features or fix bugs.
What can you do with Typecho-Butterfly?
- Migrate an existing butterfly blog — Import Markdown files into Typecho and reuse the original butterfly CSS to preserve the visual design.
- Run a private or members-only blog — Encrypt individual posts or the entire site, restrict access, and require visitors to reply before seeing hidden content.
- Monetize through ads — Place Google ads or custom ad blocks at manually selected positions and adjust them from the admin backend.
- Customize the reader experience — Toggle night mode, reading mode, Chinese character conversion, and choose from multiple mouse click effects.
How does the theme work?
Installation follows the standard Typecho theme workflow: download the theme from the Releases page (the Code page may contain incomplete or ahead-of-release changes), extract the folder into your blog's usr/theme directory, and enable it in the Typecho admin panel. The theme runs on PHP 7.4 or newer, and the author tests on Typecho 1.3.0, PHP 8.2, PostgreSQL, and Nginx.
What are the current limitations?
The port is not based on the latest Hexo Butterfly release, so the original index.css file may cause display bugs on this theme. Several roadmap items are still unchecked, including MathJax and Katex support, PWA, multiple online chat integrations (Chatra, Tidio, Daovoice, Gitter, Crisp), typed-text effects, background effects, a preloader animation, a photo wall, custom code color schemes, and copy-protection with copyright information. The online visitor count may not work on some virtual hosts.
