About Indiepaper

Indiepaper is a Hugo theme designed for writers who value simplicity, accessibility, and ownership of their content. It draws inspiration from Medium’s clean typography but implements it with a brutalist, smolweb approach.

Design Philosophy

The theme is built on these principles:

  1. Content First: Your words are the focus. No distractions, no unnecessary decorations.
  2. Semantic HTML: Every element has meaning and purpose, ensuring accessibility and SEO.
  3. IndieWeb Native: Own your content with built-in support for webmentions, micropub, and other decentralized protocols.
  4. Performance: Fast loading times with minimal resources鈥攑erfect for all devices and connections.
  5. Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA compliance ensures everyone can access your content.

Technical Details

  • Single CSS file (style.css) with no embedded fonts
  • System font stacks for optimal performance
  • Semantic HTML5 structure
  • Microformats2 for IndieWeb compatibility
  • Print-friendly styles included
  • Dark mode support via CSS media queries

Performance Scores

Indiepaper achieves perfect scores across all Lighthouse audits:

Lighthouse Performance Scores - 100% across all categories

How to Use Indiepaper

1
2
3

# In your Hugo site directory
hugo mod init github.com/yourusername/yoursite
hugo mod get github.com/brennanbrown/indiepaper

Add to your hugo.toml:

1
2
3

[module]
  [[module.imports]]
    path = "github.com/brennanbrown/indiepaper"

Option 2: Git Submodule

1
2

# In your Hugo site directory
git submodule add https://github.com/brennanbrown/indiepaper themes/indiepaper

Add to your hugo.toml:

1

theme = "indiepaper"

Option 3: Direct Download

馃摝 Download Indiepaper Theme (.zip)

Extract the zip to your themes/ directory and add theme = "indiepaper" to your hugo.toml.

Configuration

Basic configuration in hugo.toml:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

[params]
  description = "Your site description"
  motto = "Your site motto"
  
  [params.author]
    name = "Your Name"
    email = "your@email.com"
    url = "https://yoursite.com"
    bio = "Your bio"

Content Structure

Create content in content/post/ with front matter:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

---
title: "Your Post Title"
date: 2026-01-01T00:00:00-07:00
draft: false
summary: "Brief description"
tags: ["tag1", "tag2"]
categories: ["category1"]
---

Author

Created by Brennan Brown, a web developer passionate about the indieweb and accessible design.