Blowfish is a highly customisable theme and uses some of the latest Hugo features to simplify how it is configured.
The theme ships with a default configuration that gets you up and running with a basic blog or static website.
We just launched a CLI tool to help you get started with Blowfish. It will help you with installation and configuration. Install the CLI tool globally using:
npx blowfish-tools
Configuration files bundled with the theme are provided in TOML format as this is the default Hugo syntax. Feel free to convert your config to YAML or JSON if you wish.
The default theme configuration is documented in each file so you can freely adjust the settings to meet your needs.
As outlined in the installation instructions, you should adjust your theme configuration by modifying the files in the
config/_default/ folder of your Hugo project and delete the config.toml file in your project root.Site configuration#
Standard Hugo configuration variables are respected throughout the theme, however there are some specific things that should be configured for the best experience.
The site configuration is managed through the config/_default/config.toml file. The table below outlines all the settings that the Blowfish takes advantage of.
Note that the variable names provided in this table use dot notation to simplify the TOML data structure (ie. outputs.home refers to [outputs] home).
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
theme | "blowfish" | When using Hugo Modules this config value should be removed. For all other installation types, this must be set to blowfish for the theme to function. |
baseURL | Not set | The URL to the root of the website. |
defaultContentLanguage | "en" | This value determines the default language of theme components and content. Refer to the language and i18n section below for supported language codes. |
enableRobotsTXT | true | When enabled, a robots.txt file will be created in the site root that allows search engines to crawl the entire site. If you prefer to provide your own pre-made robots.txt, set to false and place your file in the static directory. For complete control, you may provide a custom layout to generate this file. |
paginate | 10 | The number of articles listed on each page of the article listing. |
summaryLength | 0 | The number of words that are used to generate the article summary when one is not provided in the front matter. A value of 0 will use the first sentence. This value has no effect when summaries are hidden. |
outputs.home | ["HTML", "RSS", "JSON"] | The output formats that are generated for the site. Blowfish requires HTML, RSS and JSON for all theme components to work correctly. |
permalinks | Not set | Refer to the Hugo docs for permalink configuration. |
taxonomies | Not set | Refer to the Organising content section for taxonomy configuration. |
Thumbnails#
Blowfish was built so it would be easy to add visual support to your articles. If your familiar with Hugo article structure, you just need to place an image file (almost all formats are supported but we recommend .png or .jpg) that starts with feature* inside your article folder. And that’s it, Blowfish will then able to both use the image as a thumbnail within your website as well as for oEmbed cards across social platforms.
Here is also a guide with more info and a sample if you want to see how you can do it.
Language and i18n#
Blowfish is optimised for full multilingual websites and theme assets are translated into several languages out of the box. The language configuration allows you to generate multiple versions of your content to provide a customised experience to your visitors in their native language.
The theme currently supports the following languages by default:
| Language | Code |
|---|---|
| 🇦🇪 Arabic | ar |
| 🇧🇬 Bulgarian | bg |
| 🇧🇩 Bengali | bn |
| 🇨🇿 Czech | cs |
| 🇩🇪 German | de |
| 🇬🇧 English | en |
| 🇪🇸 Spanish (Spain) | es |
| 🇫🇮 Finnish | fi |
| 🇫🇷 French | fr |
| 🇮🇱 Hebrew | he |
| 🇭🇷 Croatian | hr |
| 🇭🇺 Hungarian | hu |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesian | id |
| 🇮🇹 Italian | it |
| 🇯🇵 Japanese | ja |
| 🇰🇷 Korean | ko |
| 🇵🇱 Polish | pl |
| 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-br |
| 🇵🇹 Portuguese (Portugal) | pt-pt |
| 🇷🇴 Romanian | ro |
| 🇷🇺 Russian | ru |
| 🇹🇷 Turkish | tr |
| 🇻🇳 Vietnamese | vi |
| 🇨🇳 Simplified Chinese (China) | zh-cn |
| 🇹🇼 Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) | zh-tw |
The default translations can be overridden by creating a custom file in i18n/[code].yaml that contains the translation strings. You can also use this method to add new languages. If you’d like to share a new translation with the community, please open a pull request.
Configuration#
In order to be as flexible as possible, a language configuration file needs to be created for each language on the website. By default Blowfish includes an English language configuration at config/_default/languages.en.toml.
The default file can be used as a template to create additional languages, or renamed if you wish to author your website in a language other than English. Simply name the file using the format languages.[language-code].toml.
Note: Ensure the
defaultContentLanguage parameter in the site configuration matches the language code in your language config filename.Global#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
languageCode | "en" | The Hugo language code for this file. It can be a top-level language (ie. en) or a sub-variant (ie. en-au) and should match the language code in the filename. Hugo expects this value to always be in lowercase. For proper HTML compliance, set the isoCode parameter which is case-sensitive. |
languageName | "English" | The name of the language. |
weight | 1 | The weight determines the order of languages when building multilingual sites. |
title | "Blowfish" | The title of the website. This will be displayed in the site header and footer. |
Params#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
params.displayName | "EN" | The name used when the language appears on the website. |
params.isoCode | "en" | The ISO language code for HTML metadata purposes. It can be a top-level language (ie. en) or a sub-variant (ie. en-AU). |
params.rtl | false | Whether or not this is a RTL language. Set to true to reflow content from right-to-left. Blowfish fully supports using RTL and LTR languages at the same time and will dynamically adjust to both. |
params.dateFormat | "2 January 2006" | How dates are formatted in this language. Refer to the Hugo docs for acceptable formats. |
params.logo | Not set | The relative path to the site logo file within the assets/ folder. The logo file should be provided at 2x resolution and supports any image dimensions. |
params.secondaryLogo | Not set | The relative path to the secondary site logo file within the assets/ folder. The logo file should be provided at 2x resolution and supports any image dimensions. This should have an inverted/contrasting colour scheme to logo. If set, this logo will be shown when users toggle from the defaultAppearance mode. |
params.description | Not set | The website description. This will be used in the site metadata. |
params.copyright | Not set | A Markdown string for the site footer copyright message can include the placeholder { year } to dynamically insert the current year. If none is provided, Blowfish will automatically generate a copyright string using the site title. |
Author#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
author.name | Not set | The author’s name. This will be displayed in article footers, and on the homepage when the profile layout is used. |
author.image | Not set | Path to the image file of the author. The image should be a 1:1 aspect ratio and placed in the site’s assets/ folder. |
author.headline | Not set | A Markdown string containing the author’s headline. It will be displayed on the profile homepage under the author’s name. |
author.bio | Not set | A Markdown string containing the author’s bio. It will be displayed in article footers. |
author.links | Not set | The links to display alongside the author’s details. The config file contains example links which can simply be uncommented to enable. The order that the links are displayed is determined by the order they appear in the array. Custom links can be added by providing corresponding SVG icon assets in assets/icons/. |
Menus#
Blowfish also supports language-specific menu configurations. Menu config files follow the same naming format as the languages file. Simply provide the language code in the file name to tell Hugo which language the file relates to.
Menu config files are named with the format menus.[language-code].toml. Always ensure that the language code used in the menus configuration matches the languages configuration.
The Getting Started section explains more about the structure of this file. You can also refer to the Hugo menu docs for more configuration examples.
Theme parameters#
Blowfish provides a large number of configuration parameters that control how the theme functions. The table below outlines every available parameter in the config/_default/params.toml file.
Many of the article defaults here can be overridden on a per article basis by specifying it in the front matter. Refer to the Front Matter section for further details.
Global#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
colorScheme | "blowfish" | The theme colour scheme to use. Valid values are blowfish (default), avocado, ocean, fire and slate. Refer to the Colour Schemes section for more details. |
defaultAppearance | "light" | The default theme appearance, either light or dark. |
autoSwitchAppearance | true | Whether the theme appearance automatically switches based upon the visitor’s operating system preference. Set to false to force the site to always use the defaultAppearance. |
enableSearch | false | Whether site search is enabled. Set to true to enable search functionality. Note that the search feature depends on the outputs.home setting in the site configuration being set correctly. |
enableCodeCopy | false | Whether copy-to-clipboard buttons are enabled for <code> blocks. The highlight.noClasses parameter must be set to false for code copy to function correctly. Read more about other configuration files below. |
mainSections | Not set | The sections that should be displayed in the recent articles list. If not provided the section with the greatest number of articles is used. |
showViews | Not set | Whether or not articles and list views are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
showLikes | Not set | Whether or not articles and list likes are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
robots | Not set | String that indicates how robots should handle your site. If set, it will be output in the page head. Refer to Google’s docs for valid values. |
disableImageZoom | false | Disables image zoom feature across all the images in the site. |
disableImageOptimization | false | Disables image resize and optimization features across all the images in the site. |
disableTextInHeader | false | Disables text in header, useful for logo based headers. |
defaultBackgroundImage | Not set | Default background image for both background homepage layout and background hero style |
defaultFeaturedImage | Not set | Default background image for all featured images across articles, will be overridden by a local featured image. |
highlightCurrentMenuArea | Not set | Marks menu entries in the main menu when selected |
smartTOC | Not set | Activate smart Table of Contents, items in view will be highlighted. |
smartTOCHideUnfocusedChildren | Not set | When smart Table of Contents is turned on, this will hide deeper levels of the table when they are not in focus. |
Header#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
header.layout | "basic" | Defines the header for the entire site, supported values are basic, fixed, fixed-fill, and fixed-fill-blur. |
Footer#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
footer.showMenu | true | Show/hide the footer menu, which can be configured in the [[footer]] section of the config/_default/menus.en.toml file. |
footer.showCopyright | true | Whether or not to show the copyright string in the site footer. Note that the string itself can be customised using the copyright parameter in the languages configuration. |
footer.showThemeAttribution | true | Whether or not to show the “powered by” theme attribution in the site footer. If you choose to disable this message, please consider attributing the theme somewhere else on your site (for example, on your about page). |
footer.showAppearanceSwitcher | false | Whether or not to show the appearance switcher in the site footer. The browser’s local storage is used to persist the visitor’s preference. |
footer.showScrollToTop | true | When set to true the scroll to top arrow is displayed. |
Homepage#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
homepage.layout | "profile" | The layout of the homepage. Valid values are page, profile, hero, card, background, or custom. When set to custom, you must provide your own layout by creating a /layouts/partials/home/custom.html file. Refer to the Homepage Layout section for more details. |
homepage.homepageImage | Not set | Image to be used in hero and card layouts. Refer to the Homepage Layout section for more details. |
homepage.showRecent | false | Whether or not to display the recent articles list on the homepage. |
homepage.showRecentItems | 5 | How many articles to display if showRecent is true. If variable is set to 0 or if it isn’t defined the system will default to 5 articles. |
homepage.showMoreLink | false | Whether or not to display a show more link at the end of your posts that takes the user to a predefined place. |
homepage.showMoreLinkDest | /posts | The destination of the show more button. |
homepage.cardView | false | Display recent articles as a gallery of cards. |
homepage.cardViewScreenWidth | false | Enhance the width of the recent articles card gallery to take the full width available. |
homepage.layoutBackgroundBlur | false | Makes the background image in the homepage layout blur with the scroll |
Article#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
article.showDate | true | Whether or not article dates are displayed. |
article.showViews | false | Whether or not article views are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
article.showLikes | false | Whether or not article likes are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
article.showDateOnlyInArticle | false | Show date within article even if not displayed in article listings/cards. |
article.showDateUpdated | false | Whether or not the dates articles were updated are displayed. |
article.showAuthor | true | Whether or not the author box is displayed in the article footer. |
article.showHero | false | Whether the thumbnail image will be shown as a hero image within each article page. |
article.heroStyle | Not set | Style to display the hero image, valid options are: basic, big, background, thumbAndBackground. |
article.layoutBackgroundBlur | true | Makes the background image in the background article heroStyle blur with the scroll |
article.layoutBackgroundHeaderSpace | true | Add space between the header and the body. |
article.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the article header. |
article.showDraftLabel | true | Whether or not the draft indicator is shown next to articles when site is built with --buildDrafts. |
article.showEdit | false | Whether or not the link to edit the article content should be displayed. |
article.editURL | Not set | When article.showEdit is active, the URL for the edit link. |
article.editAppendPath | true | When article.showEdit is active, whether or not the path to the current article should be appended to the URL set at article.editURL. |
article.seriesOpened | false | Whether or not the series module will be displayed open by default or not. |
article.showHeadingAnchors | true | Whether or not heading anchor links are displayed alongside headings within articles. |
article.showPagination | true | Whether or not the next/previous article links are displayed in the article footer. |
article.invertPagination | false | Whether or not to flip the direction of the next/previous article links. |
article.showReadingTime | true | Whether or not article reading times are displayed. |
article.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on articles. |
article.showRelatedContent | false | Display related content for each post. Might required additional configuration to your config.toml. Please check the theme config.toml if you want to enable this feature and copy all the relevant related entries. Also check Hugo’s docs on related content. |
article.relatedContentLimit | 3 | Limit of related articles to display if showRelatedContent is turned on. |
article.showTaxonomies | false | Whether or not the taxonomies related to this article are displayed. |
article.showAuthorsBadges | false | Whether the authors taxonomies are are displayed in the article or list header. This requires the setup of multiple authors and the authors taxonomy. Check this page for more details on how to configure that feature. |
article.showWordCount | false | Whether or not article word counts are displayed. |
article.showComments | false | Whether or not the comments partial is included after the article footer. |
article.sharingLinks | Not set | Which sharing links to display at the end of each article. When not provided, or set to false no links will be displayed. Available values are: “linkedin”, “twitter”, “reddit”, “pinterest”, “facebook”, “email”, “whatsapp”, and “telegram” |
article.showZenMode | false | Flag to activate Zen Mode reading feature for articles. |
List#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
list.showHero | false | Whether the thumbnail image will be shown as a hero image within each list page. |
list.heroStyle | Not set | Style to display the hero image, valid options are: basic, big, background, thumbAndBackground. |
list.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the header on list pages. |
list.layoutBackgroundBlur | true | Makes the background image in the background list heroStyle blur with the scroll |
list.layoutBackgroundHeaderSpace | true | Add space between the header and the body. |
list.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on list pages. |
list.showSummary | false | Whether or not article summaries are displayed on list pages. If a summary is not provided in the front matter, one will be auto generated using the summaryLength parameter in the site configuration. |
list.showViews | false | Whether or not list views are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
list.showLikes | false | Whether or not list likes are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
list.showCards | false | Whether or not each article is displayed as a card or as simple inline text. |
list.groupByYear | true | Whether or not articles are grouped by year on list pages. |
list.cardView | false | Display lists as a gallery of cards. |
list.cardViewScreenWidth | false | Enhance the width of card galleries in lists to take the full width available. |
list.constrainItemsWidth | false | Limit item width to prose to increase readability. Useful when no feature images are available. |
list.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on articles. |
Sitemap#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
sitemap.excludedKinds | ["taxonomy", "term"] | Kinds of content that should be excluded from the generated /sitemap.xml file. Refer to the Hugo docs for acceptable values. |
Taxonomy#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
taxonomy.showTermCount | true | Whether or not the number of articles within a taxonomy term is displayed on the taxonomy listing. |
taxonomy.showHero | false | Whether the thumbnail image will be shown as a hero image within each taxonomy page. |
taxonomy.heroStyle | Not set | Style to display the hero image, valid options are: basic, big, background, thumbAndBackground. |
taxonomy.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the taxonomy header. |
taxonomy.showViews | false | Whether or not article views are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
taxonomy.showLikes | false | Whether or not article likes are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
taxonomy.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on taxonomies. |
taxonomy.cardView | false | Display lists as a gallery of cards. |
Term#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
term.showHero | false | Whether the thumbnail image will be shown as a hero image within each term page. |
term.heroStyle | Not set | Style to display the hero image, valid options are: basic, big, background, thumbAndBackground. |
term.showBreadcrumbs | false | Whether or not breadcrumbs are displayed in the term header. |
term.showViews | false | Whether or not article views are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
term.showLikes | false | Whether or not article likes are displayed. This requires firebase integrations to be enabled, look below. |
term.showTableOfContents | false | Whether or not the table of contents is displayed on terms. |
term.groupByYear | false | Whether or not articles are grouped by year on term pages. |
term.cardView | false | Display lists as a gallery of cards. |
term.cardViewScreenWidth | false | Enhance the width of card galleries in lists to take the full width available. |
Firebase#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
firebase.apiKey | Not set | Firebase apiKey, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.authDomain | Not set | Firebase authDomain, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.projectId | Not set | Firebase projectId, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.storageBucket | Not set | Firebase storageBucket, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.messagingSenderId | Not set | Firebase messagingSenderId, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.appId | Not set | Firebase appId, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
firebase.measurementId | Not set | Firebase measurementId, required to integrate against Firebase. Check this page for a guide on how to integrate Firebase into Blowfish. |
Fathom Analytics#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
fathomAnalytics.site | Not set | The site code generated by Fathom Analytics for the website. Refer to the Analytics docs for more details. |
fathomAnalytics.domain | Not set | If using a custom domain with Fathom Analytics, provide it here to serve script.js from the custom domain. |
BuyMeACoffee#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
buymeacoffee.identifier | Not set | The identifier to the target buymeacoffee account. |
buymeacoffee.globalWidget | Not set | Activate the global buymeacoffee widget. |
buymeacoffee.globalWidgetMessage | Not set | Message what will be displayed the first time a new user lands on the site. |
buymeacoffee.globalWidgetColor | Not set | Widget color in hex format. |
buymeacoffee.globalWidgetPosition | Not set | Position of the widget, i.e. “Left” or “Right” |
Verifications#
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
verification.google | Not set | The site verification string provided by Google to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.bing | Not set | The site verification string provided by Bing to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.pinterest | Not set | The site verification string provided by Pinterest to be included in the site metadata. |
verification.yandex | Not set | The site verification string provided by Yandex to be included in the site metadata. |
Other configuration files#
The theme also includes a markup.toml configuration file. This file contains some important parameters that ensure that Hugo is correctly configured to generate sites built with Blowfish.
Always ensure this file is present in the config directory and that the required values are set. Failure to do so may cause certain features to function incorrectly and could result in unintended behaviour.