Am Writing - A Hugo Theme for a writer’s website

Am Writing is a theme made for Hugo for writers who desire to create an easy website.

Features

Am Writing supports :

• Several different color themes
• Multilingual (French and English by default)
• Mastodon Feed integration
• Link to your Patreon, Mastodon, Ko-fi profile
• Various book metadata for a standard display page
• Fully customizable
• Display by book genre
• Your personal author blog
• RSS support

Installation

In your hugo website root folder, add the theme :

git clone https://github.com/Wivik/am-writing-hugo-theme themes/am-writing

Or as a sub-module :

git submodule add https://github.com/Wivik/am-writing-hugo-theme themes/am-writing

Then, proceed to configuration.

Configuration

Enable the theme

Change in hugo.yaml (or toml) the theme :

theme: am-writing

Add the following taxonomies for the books list :

taxonomies:
  genres: genres

Add the default content language and indicate it’s in a subdir.

defaultContentLanguage: fr
defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: true

Then, add the two langues settings :

Do not change mainSections: ['books']

languages:
  fr:
    contentDir: content/fr
    disabled: false
    languageCode: fr-FR
    languageName: Français
    title: Demo Author
    params:
      subtitle: Auteur d'un Site Demo
      mainSections: ['books']
    weight: 1
    menu:
      main:
        - identifier: home
          name: 'Accueil'
          url: /fr/
          weight: 10
        - identifier: books
          name: 'Livres'
          url: /fr/books/
          weight: 20
        - identifier: tags
          name: 'Genres'
          url: /fr/genres/
          weight: 30
        - identifier: legal
          name: 'Mentions légales'
          url: /fr/legal/
          weight: 40
  en:
    contentDir: content/en
    languageCode: en-GB
    languageName: English
    title: Demo Author
    disabled: false
    params:
      subtitle: Writer of a Demo Website
      mainSections: ['books']
    weight: 2
    menu:
      main:
        - identifier: home
          name: 'Home'
          url: /en/
          weight: 10
        - identifier: books
          name: 'Books'
          url: /en/books/
          weight: 20
        - identifier: tags
          name: 'Genres'
          url: /en/genres/
          weight: 30
        - identifier: legal
          name: 'Legal Notice'
          url: /en/legal/
          weight: 40

Adapt it with you choices.

Specific settings

The theme supports the following settings :

Themes showcase

Nord (defaut)

Catpuccin Latte

Catpuccin Frappe

Dark

Book list layout

The theme supports two layouts for the book list : grid (default) and list.

Grid layout :

List layout (previous one) :

Override default profile

The short bio available on the left is configured in the translation files. To override it, create a translation file <hugo site root dir>/i18n named according to the language (ex : English : en.yaml).

Inside, you can override the builtin translations :

genres:
  short-story: "Short Story"
  science-fiction: "Science Fiction"

about:
  author: |
    Insert here your author's bio    

  legal-notice: |
    The stories and characters in <YOUR NAME HERE>'s books are purely fictional. Any resemblance to existing or former persons is purely coincidental.    

Blog

This theme can also be your blog. It’s a very simple feature so don’t expect fancy use cases.

To use the blog feature, follow these steps :

1. Enable the feature in your hugo site config

params:
  blog: true

I recommend to reduce the article summary. Add the following setting in hugo config too :

summaryLength: 20

2. Add the menu entry

        - identifier: blog
          name: 'Blog'
          url: /blog/
          weight: 30

Or if you use multilingual :

        - identifier: blog
          name: 'Blog'
          url: /fr/blog/
          weight: 30

        - identifier: blog
          name: 'Blog'
          url: /en/blog/
          weight: 30

Warning : in case of multilingual support, the article will have to be in all languages folders if they’re intended to be display for each of them. Refer to the Multilingual mode Hugo documentation.

3. Create your first blog entry.

hugo new --kind blog blog/my-first-post.md

Subscribe to the site’s content

This feature was made to generate a “how to subscribe to this content” page. Basically, it’s an agregate of your various communication channels for your audience.

To enable this feature, first you need to set params.displaySubscribeButton to true in hugo.yaml. The following button will appear :

Then, mode subscribe-example.md available in with this theme to your content/ folder and name it subscribe.md. Attention, if your site is multilingual, you need to copy it in each language folder. Such as content/fr/subscribe.md and content/en/subscribe.md.

This page is basically a list of Hugo Shortcodes that will display the following elements :

• this_site : a simple explanation about registering the site in the user’s bookmarks.
• rss_books : a RSS feed for the books only
• rss_blog : a RSS feed for the Blog feature. Will be displayed only if the blog is enabled.
• newsletter : the integration code for your newsletter provider. Will integrate the code provided in params.newsletterIntegrationCode.
• fediverse : a link to your Mastodon account if defined in the settings.

All descriptions displayed in these pages can be overrided in the related i18n file.

Books management

Books page content

All the books pages are managed by metadata, no actual content inside the markdown file.

Please refer to the archetype/book.md file for comprehensive reference.

Variables documentation :

Create a new book

Use hugo with the right kind.

hugo new content books/my-book.md --kind book

Then, edit the new file accordingly.

Concerns about translated books

The book file (ex : my-book.md) must have the same name for eveyr languages. Change the title inside the file. So Hugo will be able to match the various languages for your content.

Ex :

• en/books/my-book.md => title: My Book
• fr/books/my-book.md => title: Mon Livre

License

Am Writing is licensed under MIT. See LICENSE.

Third party content license

• Droid Serif is licensed under Apache 2.0
• Droid Sans is licensed under Apache 2.0
• Using Remix Icons licensed under Apache 2.0
• Uses Catpuccin color scheme licensed under MIT license
• Uses Nord Theme color scheme licensed under MIT license