Horsefeather
Horsefeather is an opinionated, modern, pretty, and clean Zola theme that has the purpose of greatly simplifying the process of rolling up your blog. It aims to provide all the necessary options for comfortable writing, while keeping the balance of simplicity. It is a fork of Duckquill with a few more features added on.
With it, you can change some configuration variables, tweak some of the included graphics, and have a nice blog up in minutes!
Some of the features Duckquill has to offer:
- Cute and informative social media cards for Discourse, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon and more.
- Mastodon-powered comments; comment under a post by using your Mastodon account.
- Lightweight by default, powerful when needed; no mandatory JavaScript is used by default.
- Privacy respecting analytics using GoatCounter, with support for self-hosting.
- Estimated read time of the post; put away those with short attention spans.
- Light/dark/system theme switcher (for some reason everyone likes these).
- Everything is tinted with the user-defined accent color for a pleasant look.
- GitHub-style alerts. Yes, they’re pretty, but don’t overuse them.
- Post banners; they’re even used in the social media cards!
- YouTube/Vimeo shortcodes for easy video embedding.
- Tiny by default; only ~100kB. Take that, 5MB Medium!
- Customizable copyright text; you Better Quack Soul!
- Image styling via URL. Yes, you read that right.
- Useless CRT style that everyone seems to like.
- Fully localizeable, worry not, it’s pretty easy.
- Social links in the footer, with special styling.
- LaTeX markup support via the KaTeX library.
- Emoji favicon if you’re lazy to draw one.
- Copy button for code blocks.
- Search functionality.
On top of these, Horsefeather adds:
- Collapsible inline asides for posts to share optional information.
If you use Horsefeather and enjoy it, please consider buying the original author of Duckquill a coffee, it would mean the world to me ^^.
Installation
First, if you already have Git setup, add this theme as a submodule:
Otherwise, simply clone it to your themes directory:
It is highly recommended to switch from the
mainbranch to the latest release:
Then, enable it in your config.toml:
= "horsefeather"
To update the theme, simply switch to a new tag:
Check the changelog for all versions after the one you are using; there may be breaking changes that require manual involvement.
Options
Horsefeather offers some configuration options to make it fit you better; most options have pretty descriptive comments, so it should be easy to understand what they do.
Front Matter
Horsefeather has some front matter variables that you can use by setting them in the [extra] section:
Global
Configuration variables from config.toml that can be set/overriden per page/section:
default_theme: Which theme should be used by default (light/dark).accent_color: Sets theme and browser theme color.accent_color_dark: Ditto but for the dark theme. If not set regular variant will be used.emoji_favicon: Use emoji as a favicon. Only one emoji is being rendered, everything else is truncated.styles: Additional CSS styles; expects them to be in the./static/directory. If you are using Sass it will be generated there automatically.scripts: Additional JavaScript scripts; expects them to be in the./static/directory.katex: Whether to enable the KaTeX library for rendering LaTeX.toc: Enables table of contents. Only first 2 levels of headings are listed.toc_inline: Whether to render inline table of contents at the top of all pages, in addition to floating quick navigation buttons.toc_ordered: Whether to use numbered (ordered) list for table of contents.toc_sidebar: Whether to display table of contents as a sidebar (useful for long pages).card: When set tofalsedisables share preview cards globally.
Other variables:
apple_touch_icon: Filename of the colocated Apple Touch Icon.favicon: Filename of the colocated favicon.card: Filename of the colocated metadata card.archive: Displays an archived message.trigger: Displays a trigger warning message.disclaimer: Displays a disclaimer message.go_to_top: Displays a “go to top” button.
Blog post specific:
banner: Filename of the colocated banner image. Recommended dimensions are 2:1 aspect ratio and 1920x960 resolution.banner_pixelsMakes the banner use nearest neighbor algorithm for scaling, useful for keeping pixel-art sharp.archived: Make the post visually stand out in the post list. Also accepts message as a value.featured: Ditto but doesn’t accept message as a value.hot: Ditto.poor: Ditto.
In [extra.comments] section:
host: The Mastodon server on which the post was posted.user: The username of the poster.id: ID of the post; the one in the URL.
Localization
Horsefeather ships with a localization system based on one used in tabi, it’s very easy to use and quite flexible at the same time.
To add a translation, simply create a file in your site’s i18n directory called LANG_CODE.toml, e.g fr.toml. The language code should be either ISO 639-1 or BCP 47.
Inside that file, copy-paste one of the existing translations from Horsefeather and adapt it to your needs. You can also check tabi translation files for reference.
Additionally to translating Horsefeather, you can also override the English stings by copy-pasting en.toml from Horsefeather to the i18n directory of your website and adjusting the values to your liking.
Custom Styles
To add your own or override existing styles, create a custom style and add it in the config.toml:
[]
= [
"YOUR_STYLE.css",
"ALSO_YOUR_STYLE.css"
]
Additional styles are expected it to be in the static directory. If you are using Sass they will be compiled there by default.
If for some reason overridden style is not respected, try using !important (don’t use it unless needed). You can import styles from Horsefeather using:
You can also load styles per page/section by setting them inside page’s front matter:
[]
= [
"YOUR_PAGE_STYLE.css"
]
Accent Color
Horsefeather respects chosen accent color everywhere. To use your own, simply change it in config.toml:
[]
= "#3584e4"
Additionally, you can set a separate color for dark mode:
[]
= "#ff7800"
Favicon
Files named favicon.png and apple-touch-icon.png are used as favicon and Apple Touch Icon respectively. For animated favicon you can use APNG with the png file extension.
Assets Sources
All sources for the original Duckquill assets are available here and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Credits
Thanks To
- Daudix for writing the original Duckquill theme this is a fork of.
- Jakub Steiner for the OS Component Website, which served as a starting point and inspiration.
- Óscar for tabi and its translation system, rel attributes, and Content Security Policy.
- Carl Schwan for the Mastodon-powered Comments.
- Jonathan Neal for the normalize.css.
- GNOME design team for the icon development kit
- Modern Font Stacks for the system font stack.
- TheEvilSkeleton for helping to improve the look and accessibility.
- Dexter Reed for being the first Duckquill user, preventing it from being axed.
- Everyone who supported Daudix and said good stuff <3