My Extremely Important Website Theme Change
This website or blog (not sure what to call it) is built using Hugo, which is seriously amazing if you haven’t come across it before. Hugo is a static site generator, and it’s my go-to for generating websites that don’t require dynamic updates. It’s simple and just works, which is rare enough in the tech world that it deserves a mention.
I’m a Java developer by trade, and sitting server-side is where I’m most comfortable. When it comes to front-end work, I’m about as skilled as a cat trying to play the piano - occasional moments of accidental brilliance surrounded by complete disaster. That being said, I somehow managed to create a Hugo Theme that’s actually published in their main theme directory. The fact that I was able to do that is either a testament to how great Hugo truly is or evidence that their standards are worryingly low. Probably the former.
Theme Change
Changing themes with Hugo is ridiculously straightforward. It’s just a case of creating a git submodule within the themes directory, then changing the config file to point to that directory. Easy peasy. With that in mind, it lends itself to swapping themes in and out to find one that suits me, which I’ve spent WAY too much time doing (seriously, I’ve spent more time changing how my blog looks than actually writing content for it, which is…not great).
Theme Requirements
I’m a simple person (some might say boring, I prefer “minimalist”), and I wanted a simple theme with minimal features and design. I could have used the theme that I created - which would make sense, right? - but the Bootstrap Freelancer theme was more of a showcase for projects and work, which isn’t what this site is about. Plus, it could be painfully slow sometimes because it was so graphics-heavy and loaded external frameworks. I mean, it’s based on Bootstrap with the Freelancer design, so of course it’s a bit chunky.
My requirements were pretty basic:
- Make it simple (like, really simple - I’m talking 90s web simple)
- Make it fast (no waiting 5 seconds for animations to load)
- No external JavaScript or stylesheets pulling in who-knows-what
- No trackers or data collection (I don’t care how many people read this, honestly)
- No cookie consent banners (we all hate them, let’s be real)
Basically, I wanted something that looks like it could have been coded in Notepad, because that’s the aesthetic I apparently aspire to. My design sensibilities peaked in 1998 and I’m fine with that.
Smigle - The Theme That Time Forgot
On the Hugo theme showcase (after wasting an entire Saturday looking through themes), I came across Smigle. First off, I love the name - it’s fun to say out loud. Try it. See? Fun.
But more importantly, it checked basically all my boxes. It’s so basic it looks like it was coded on a Commodore 64. It makes my blog look like you’re viewing it through the Wayback Machine circa 1995. It loads in approximately 0.0002 seconds. And there are zero distractions - no fancy animations, no popups, no “subscribe to my newsletter” nonsense.
Is it pretty? God no. My designer friends would have a stroke if they saw it. But that’s kind of the point. I wanted something that says “I’m a backend developer and I don’t have time for your fancy CSS transitions.”
There are a few things that bug me about it though (because apparently I can’t just be happy with things):
First, in the banner, I’m forced to have a display image. Right now it’s my little avatar, but if no image is provided, it defaults to the theme’s logo. I’d rather not have any logo at all because…reasons? I don’t know, it just feels unnecessary.
Second, there’s this tagline thing under my name on the site. Again, I don’t want it. I tried putting an empty string in the configuration, but that messed up the spacing and made everything look wonky, which bothered me way more than it should have. I literally lost sleep over this. (Not really, but I did stare at it for longer than any normal person would.)
Finally, there’s the favicon issue. This is such a tiny thing that literally no one except me would ever notice or care about, but I want my own custom favicon, dammit. Currently, the theme doesn’t seem to respect the one in my static folder. This could totally be user error (highly likely), but if it’s not, I’ll need to fix it.
Final Thoughts
I wanted a change because I was bored and procrastinating on actual work. Also, I thought it would be kind of funny in a meta way that a backend developer’s website looks like it was designed by…well, a backend developer.
The new theme is blazing fast, doesn’t track you, and doesn’t make you click “I accept” on anything. It’s like you were never here. Which, statistically speaking, you probably weren’t - I’m pretty sure my only regular reader is my mum, and even she skims.
If you’ve read this far on a post about me changing my blog theme, you deserve some kind of medal or maybe therapy. Either way, thanks for indulging my rambling about what is possibly the least important update in the history of the internet.