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 :

Setting	Required	Default value	Description
params.amazonAuthorProfile	No	none	URL to your Amazon Author profile
params.author	No	none	Your author name, your should set it.
params.avatar	No	none	A picture expected to be in the /static folder.
params.blog	No	false	Enable or disable the blog feature. Supported parameters : - true - false (default) See Blog feature for how to use.
params.bookListType	No	grid	Change the book list style, default is thumbnail grid with description. Other option is list for the previous display way. Possible values : - grid (default) - list
params.books2readProfile	No	none	URL to your Books2Read profile
params.commission	No	false	Display a button showing you're open for commissions. Possible values : true (commissions opened), false (commissions closed)
params.commissionLink	No	none	The link to your commission platform.
params.contentLicense	No	none	Display the license used for the website in the footer. Ex : CC BY-SA 4.0
params.displaySubscribeButton	No	false	Along with the usage of the subscribe-example.md page you would put in your content direct and rename, this option will enable a 'Subscribe' button redirecting to the subscribe page. See Subscribe to the site's content for more details.
params.displaySubscribeRSS	No	true	Display the RSS subscribe buttons on the About left section. The RSS link is for the books release. If the blog is enabled, another button will be display too. Same for the newsletter link.
params.goodreads	No	none	Your GoodReads profile URL
params.googlePlayAuthorProfile	No	none	URL to your Google Play Books profile
params.kofi	No	none	Your Ko-fi profile URL
params.liberapay	No	none	Your Liberapay support URL
params.mastodon	No	none	The URL of your Mastodon profile.
params.mastodonMaxItems	No	5	How much posts you want to display in your feed.
params.neovelAuthorProfile	No	none	URL to your Neovel profile
params.newsletterIntegrationCode	No	none	Using the multiline yaml syntax to paste here the integration code for your newsletter subscription.
params.newsletterSubscriptionLink	No	none	The link to your Newsletter subscription page. This setting has the precedence over the newsletter integration in the Susbcription page. Meaning if you set both, the link to the newsletter subscription will be displayed but not the integrated form.
params.pageCountisEstimated	No	false	If set to true, this will add a small pop-up on the number of Pages displayed on the book details indicating the page count is an estimation. This is recommended if you only publish epub files because unlike physical copies, they does not have actual defined pages layout. The default estimation is said to be based on 280 words per pages (see my epub metadata exporter tool for more). You may adapt this message in the i18n translation.
params.patreon	No	none	Your Patreon profile URL. You need a picture for the homepage, save it as patreon.jpg in the static/ folder.
params.theme	No	nord	Use one of the built-in themes : - nord - catpuccin-latte - catpuccin-frappe
params.themeFont	No	serif	Use the Serif or Sans Serif font. Available options : - serif - sans-serif
params.xinxiiAuthorProfile	No	none	URL to your Xinxii profile

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 :

Name	Required	Default value	Description
amazon	No	none	The link to Amazon KDP entry. If you publish only on Amazon, ignore this field and put the link in link.
author	Yes	{{ .Site.Params.author }}	Author's name, in case it would be a different person.
authorsnote	No	none	If you want to add a personal comment about your book.
book	Yes	true	Do not remove or change, it's used by the template.
cover	No but recommended	{{ printf "%s.jpg" .File.ContentBaseName }}	The name of the cover file. This file is expected to be in the /static folder.
date	Yes	{{ .Date }}	The book's publication date. This is defined by Hugo as page creation, so modify it to reflect the actual release date.
description	No but recommended	none	The book's description. Could be the synopsis or whatever else you want. Markdown is supported.
draft	No	false	Set true if you don't want to publish this entry yet.
epub	No	false	You can directly propose an epub file, put in this field the epub filename (ex : something.epub). It must be placed in the /static/free-books folder.
free	No	false	If you publish your book for free, will change the value of the main link button to "Free book".
freepreview	No	false	If you have a free preview for your book, put here the name of the .epub file. The file is expected to be in the /static/books-preview/ folder.
genres	No	none	A list of your book's genres. Use the technical name available in the i18n files to have the labels translated.
googlePlay	No	none	The link to Google Play Books if you publish there.
isbn	No	1234567891237	Your book's ISBN
language	Yes	EN	The book's language. Required if multilingual and the book has a translation.
link	No	none	The link of your main selling place. Book2Read for example. If missing, the page will display "Unavailable".
neovel	No	none	The link to Neovel if you publish there.
pages	No	70	How much pages the book contains. You can use a tool I've made for this information.
patreon	No	none	The link to Patreon if you publish there.
publishedOn	No	{{ .Date }}	The publication date of your book. Default to the page creation date if not provided.
title	Yes	{{ replace .File.ContentBaseName "-" " " | title }}	The Book's title
words	No	18k	How much words the book contains. You can use a tool I've made for this information.
xinxii	No	none	The link to XinXii if you publish there.

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