Tanka: A Minimalist Theme for Hugo and Blogdown

Nan Xiao December 27, 2017 1 min read

I used to mention creating a purely R-based static website generator named Haiku with my then classmate Arjun about two years ago. I remember that he said the name was nice.

Time flies, and apparently, I did not have the chance to build it. Fortunately, Yihui saved the world again, and now blogdown has become the most elegant and powerful static website generator for R users, especially if you love R Markdown.

Without a hesitation, I decided to revive my blog and build a minimalist theme for it. Based on David’s awesome Black & Light theme, I made some of my own improvements and built this Hugo theme named Tanka for blogdown and Hugo users.

Figure: A screenshot of the Hugo Tanka theme.

It is straightforward to create your blogdown website and try out the Tanka theme in RStudio. Simply click FileNew ProjectNew DirectoryWebsite using blogdown, then fill the “Hugo theme” field with nanxstats/hugo-tanka.

Figure: Creating a blogdown site with the Hugo Tanka theme in RStudio.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for this theme. Enjoy!