A minimal retro-terminal blog theme for WordPress. This is a port of panr/hugo-theme-terminal — the original Hugo theme's CSS, typography, and markup have been preserved; Hugo templating has been rewritten as classic PHP templates.
cd wp-content/themes
git clone https://github.com/amd989/wordpress-theme-terminal.git terminal
Then activate under Appearance → Themes.
Requires WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 8.0+.
All options live under Appearance → Customize → Terminal Theme:
- Colors — accent, background, foreground. Change any of these and the customizer preview updates live via CSS custom properties.
- Layout & Navigation — container mode (default / full / centered), logo text, site subtitle, keywords, menu "More"-dropdown threshold and label.
- Post Display — reading time, last-updated stamp, auto-cover-image, unit labels, date format.
- Table of Contents — site-wide enable + heading text. Individual posts override via the meta box.
- Labels — all user-facing button / heading strings.
- Social & SEO — Twitter card handles.
- Analytics — Google Analytics Measurement ID.
Per-post overrides live in the Terminal Options meta box on the post editor (side column): cover image URL, cover credit, noindex, hide comments, force reading time on this post, TOC on/off, date format override, show-full-content on listings.
Assign a menu to the Main Navigation location under Appearance → Menus.
[code language="go" title="example.go" open="true"]
package main
func main() {
println("hello")
}
[/code]
Argument names are preserved from the Hugo theme's code shortcode. Prism.js highlights the block client-side; the language identifier is the Prism short name (e.g. go, bash, python, javascript).
[image src="https://example.com/img.jpg" alt="Alt text" position="center" width="600"]
Valid positions: left (default), center, right.
[terminal_terms taxonomy="post_tag"]
Alphabetical list of taxonomy terms with post counts. Replaces Hugo's terms.html behavior.
Prism.js is loaded from jsDelivr with the autoloader plugin, so any language grammar loads on demand the first time it's used. The CSS color mapping in assets/css/syntax.css uses the same duotone variables (--first-tone, --second-tone, --comment) derived from your accent color.
To self-host Prism, drop a custom build from prismjs.com/download into assets/js/prism.js and override the prism-core / prism-autoloader enqueues from a child theme's functions.php.
Override theme CSS variables or add custom rules by editing assets/css/terminal.css (pre-bundled, but empty) or by adding a child theme.
panr's terminal-css generator produces drop-in color palettes for this theme. Use the theme output (the 4-line :root { --background; --foreground; --accent; } block) — it's CSS-variable-only and layers cleanly on top of the theme.
Two ways to apply a generated palette:
- Paste the three hex values directly into Appearance → Customize → Terminal Theme → Colors.
- Or paste the full
:root {…}block intoassets/css/terminal.cssto version-control the palette alongside the theme.
Do not use the generator's "standalone" output — that's a full stylesheet meant for pages with no other CSS loaded, and will conflict with the theme's own rules.
The theme is translation-ready — UI strings are wrapped in __() / _e() and shipped with a .pot template in languages/. For content translation, install Polylang — the language switcher in the header activates automatically when Polylang's functions are present, and no-ops otherwise.
There is no build step. CSS is served directly from assets/css/ in the order Hugo used (fonts → main → header → menu → footer → post → code → buttons → pagination → terms → syntax → gist → terminal). JS is in assets/js/. Make changes in place and refresh.
CI runs php -l against every .php file across supported PHP versions.
docker compose up -d
Then open http://localhost:8080, run the WordPress install wizard, and activate Terminal under Appearance → Themes. The repo is bind-mounted into wp-content/themes/terminal, so edits to .php / .css / .js files are reflected on refresh.
WP-CLI is wired under the cli profile:
docker compose run --rm wpcli wp theme list
docker compose run --rm wpcli wp theme activate terminal
Stop + wipe:
docker compose down -v # -v also removes the db + wp volumes
- WordPress theme © 2026 amd989 — original PHP templates, customizer integration, meta boxes, shortcodes, and WordPress plumbing.
- Design inspiration: Hugo theme terminal © 2024 panr — palette, Fira Code typography, duotone code colors, container layout.
- Prism.js © Lea Verou — syntax highlighting.
- Fira Code © Nikita Prokopov — SIL Open Font License.
MIT — see LICENSE.