Paper – A Clean Theme for Micro.blog amitgawande.com

@amit Sweeeet 😎 This is a theme I feel comfortable keeping for a long time. Great job! 🎉

@amit This is a really nice theme! Thank you for sharing this.

@amit This is so cool! Nicely ported.

@amit very nice. Thanks for bringing this to micro.blog!

@amit Nice. If I was hosted on m.b this is definitely something I would go for.

@amit I love this. I was just thinking the other day that I’d like something like this, or maybe this. I was recently inspired by @mariovillalobos hand-rolled site to put more thought into this because ultimately I want the webpage to be the public facing way for friends and family to interact with me.

What I like about your port is that it opens the possibility of keeping my main site on Hugo but still have a consistent look on both.

Much to ponder, thanks.

@amit Love this one. Like how this theme is suitable for plenty of micro-posts with the occasional long-form post. Thanks for the footnotes support :)

Had wondered about a design feature once. Is it possible to list a date once and then under that date, list the posts in chronological order while keeping the dates on the blog page in reverse chronological order? Would work great for micro-posts.

@sod @pimoore

@skoobz @sod @jthingelstad Thank you folks! Am glad you liked it too, I have always loved the simplicity of this for long 👍🏽

@colinwalker Thank you Colin! Recent developments around the plug-in system and themes has for sure has been pretty interesting. A lot to get inspired from 👍🏽😊

@pratik Thank you, Pratik. That's exactly the types of blogs that I had in mind while porting this. Regarding your design feature, of course, it is very much possible. That was how my home page worked till December -- a snapshot here. You may have to modify your list template, you can check the code here, if interested. // @sod @pimoore

@lukemperez Yeah, absolutely. And am so glad you liked the work. 👍🏽 Interestingly, I think a ported theme should sure work in reverse -- bascially work for both M.b and Hugo.

@amit Very nice theme! If I wouldn’t have spent the majority of the last week tweaking my current one I would easily switch to this.

@amit Oh wow, great work Amit! 🎉 I had seen this theme in my search for ones to port and bookmarked it for later. Seems I can delete that bookmark now. I love easy to read themes as well and this one most definitely fits the bill.

The growth of themes and plugins in the Micro.blog community is really exciting. I can’t wait to see what else comes down the line!

@amit Holy shit! I have been looking for that for a long time. How and where exactly do you put that code? Will it work for any theme?

@amit Wow! Another nicely designed theme. Congratulations, it looks amazing. Well done.

@amit Got this when I tried your theme:

Theme error: "/pratik_ca8b26/layouts/shortcodes/collapse.html:3:1": parse failed: template: shortcodes/collapse.html:3: function "warnf" not defined

@help

@pratik Oh will check. I am sure this has to be do with the Hugo version. I will check and update.

@amit oh, I hadn’t considered that either. Lot of good Mb themes that could go to regular Hugo. 🧐

@svenseebeck Thank you, Sven. With the recent flow of themes, trying out different looks is going to be so easy. But I agree, there's always some charm to tweaking your own 👍🏽

@pimoore Ah, thank you, Pete 👍🏽. Yeah, one less theme to port now, I guess :-)

@maique Thank you, Maique! Though I agree it's a brilliant design, but I can't take the credit that. All I did was to fing it and make modifications to port it to M.b 😊

@amit oh, that’s glorious!

@bjhess Thank you Barry! 👍🏽

@Miraz When I ported a theme the first time, I was learning. So I barely had any notes. But as I had promised you then that I will try to document the steps needed, I did note them this time. I have a few general aspects I can write about for @custom for porting a theme. You can be the editor 😀

@amit It's a nice port. I like the idea of each post being part of a stream, so you have to click on them to get to the plain text, rather than the homepage being a text document.

I have a quick question about the Custom CSS page in Design settings; do you know if those changes apply to plug-in themes? I've tried to apply some changes in there with no success.

@issimonwoods First of all, am so glad to hear you tried the theme and it's working. I just checked and it looks brilliant on your blog. I did spend some time getting the feel of the homepage right. I think it has a good balance currently.

Regarding your question, it's interesting. I don't know, yet how Custom CSS works with themes via plugins. I could try out, but I will let @manton respond.

@issimonwoods As a side note, the theme also has a custom.css file in assets. You can try adding your changes there in the mean time.

@amit This looks great!

@amit What a beautiful, clean theme. I was looking for something like this on a recent theme change. I told myself that I wouldn’t move now (Ink theme), but we’ll see….

And I like @pratik’s idea, which it seems you had already implemented on a previous design of your site. I wouldn’t know where to start on that!

@amit @issimonwoods I think it needs a tweak to support the custom CSS field. I'll take a look and can probably submit a quick pull request for the change.

@manton @amit I assume it would be better to support these changes in the CSS editor, rather than in the templates. That way minor and temporary changes can be kept safe from the updating process.

I have made a change within the templates, and that was fine, but this other change is more complicated in a way that doesn't fit so neatly with editing templates.

@manton Thank you, Manton! 👍🏽 And would love to know about the tweak for custom CSS. You can submit a PR whenever you are done.

@crossingthethreshold Thank you David! So glad you liked the theme, just as I did. Simpler moving between themes becomes, harder it is going to be to stay with one 🙃

I can probably bring in the grouping my date homepage in some manner. But it's a personal preference and very much baked into the themes. I can help you and @pratik set it up though. However, Ink might be pretty tricky for the change given the way it displays dates 🙂

@amit Fabulous! I could bring you on to @custom and you could just add it right there. Just need to remember how to do that. Will explore later today. 😎

@amit @crossingthethreshold I wouldn't mind it on your Paper theme.

Also, I'm trying to remove the Summary feature for the front page or at least add a bolded "Read More" link. Otherwise, the long-form posts are getting lost on the homepage.

Alternatively, I could use titles on the long-form posts to help them stand out but I'm trying your advice on keeping posts title-less ☺️

@Miraz No rush. I just have pointers. Still need to structure and word. So take your time 😊

@pratik Hmm sure. I thought a lot about Summary vs Content on homepage but finally went with truncated summary. It's currently adding a "..." to the end of the truncated summary. So one would know there are more posts. I had a version that would add "Read More..." to truncated posts -- but for now, this worked better.

To be frank, I like clicking on every post and paginate with this :P

@manton I have merged the PR. Thank you, Manton 👍🏽 @issimonwoods You could try again once the upgrade is available.

@amit Of course. These things are subjective.

BTW you may want to provide support for displaying Micro.blog conversation on the single post template.

@amit If you work with @pratik on grouping for your new Paper theme, I’d be interested to see how you implement that and what it looks like. For now I’ll probably stick with Ink…simply because I have just made the move. Simpler to move so more tempting, but wanting to be content with where I am at.

@lukemperez I’m flattered you like my design! I’m always tweaking it, though. Maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie 😅

@mariovillalobos it’s really great. One reason I decided to double down on microblog and delete Instagram and other services this year is that I want a place for friends and family, all of who are scattered on their preferred platform, to have a single place to see what my wife and I are up to.

So I like the minimal layouts that just make reading a few posts more inviting.

@amit Beautiful work, Amit. Thank you for sharing your talents with our community!

@pratik Yes, the upgrade is coming to include the conversations on the posts. I will check if the timeline can be customised for group posts in an upgrade in future @crossingthethreshold 👍🏼🙂

@cygnoir Thank you, Halsted. I love to contribute in the way I know the best. Plus I learn a lot 👍🏼😊

@amit Awesome. I would definitely love the customized homepage. Can exclude long-form posts if you can.

@amit I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the existence of the Paper Mod Theme for Hugo as well… 😉

@pimoore That is a GREAT theme. In fact I would say it should be the 'default' mb theme.

@amit Nice! Love the Dark Mode animation! With this theme, and Peter’s, we’re getting pretty spoiled I’d say! 😊 @pimoore

@odd I do too. Good to see I am not alone 👍 And I agree, I'm already a huge fans of both the themes that @pimoore has added. I sometimes feel what I write is not worthy of his themes. They are so polished😊

@amit @manton I tried it when the update was available and it still didn't seem to work. I'm giving it another go now and the site isn't updated with the new theme 10 minutes after installation...

Is it me or do plug-in themes take longer to show when compared to the custom theme method? I know I can force a rebuild of the site and that will probably get it to work but I don't have to do that with the old method.

@jthingelstad Thanks for commenting/sharing @amit's work -- installed this theme and enjoying it.

@issimonwoods I was able to set the Custom CSS with the yesterday's upgrade. Can you confirm if you are still unable to set it? Also, I see the site using the theme. Not sure if it got refreshed only recently. // @manton

@jth I am glad you liked it and are enjoying it 👍🏽

@amit Yep, the site's updated now. The CSS is either slow to be applied or not being applied.

I'm using the following to hide the mode button:

.header .btn-dark {display: none !important;}

I tried first without the first selector and the "!important".

@issimonwoods You can try this -- it should work.

.header a.btn-dark { display: none; }

@amit Have used that and either it's taking a long time or it's failing to update.

@amit Thank you for all of your work on this.

@amit @odd That’s very kind of you to say, but Paper looks just as polished IMO so you deserve just as much credit. 😊 More importantly I love how this aspect of the community is growing in leaps and bounds. It’s very exciting to see people using and enjoying these themes and plugins, and is an area of growth for M.b. that I’m happy to contribute to.

@amit Do you have the Paper Mod theme in your list of ports? I’m happy to leave it in your capable hands since Paper already turned out so well.

@pimoore @amit Having once been a programmer, and done some web stuff, I was tempted to try too, but I think I lack the motivation now that we have several great themes. Also, having seen the effort it clearly must take, I am not so sure.

@odd @amit It depends on the theme, and whether you’re doing a straight port or modding one in addition. Especially in the case of Hitchens where it was coming from a different platform and templating language, into Hugo. I also like to take my time to try and catch everything (and still miss bugs 😂) so that part is of my own doing.

@pimoore Yes, I can see why it might depend on that. Also, it seems like there’s a bit of “customer support” and adjusting to plugins afterwards too? I’m not sure if I can handle that anymore, but I’m glad that you and Amit and the others have the necessary energy for it. 😃👍

@odd Yes there is, and the inevitable future of having to update to Hugo 0.91. I’m not going to look into that until I hear from Manton as far as it’s stability goes.

@pimoore Hey sorry Pete, forgot to reply earlier. I love this Mod too. But I am going to try another one slightly different. Preferably one with a sidebar. If you have bookmarked one such, let me know 😜 And if you are keen, you can port this one. I am sure it would be a nice addition.

@amit Sure I can take Paper Mod on, though it won’t be right away as I’m already cooking up something else…

@amit I didn’t have any in my bookmarks, but here are a couple of interesting looking sidebar themes I found from the Hugo directory:

• Anatole
  
• Risotto
  

@pimoore Thank you. I have seen Anatole, but not Risotto. I will check for sure. 👍

@amit I've now added you as a contributor on @custom . You should be able to post from the Micro.Blog web interface by choosing the blog from the … at top right above the New Post box. I think — it's a while since I added anyone and for lengthy posts using MarsEdit would be a much better choice. We may need to check Help for more details…

@Miraz Thank you, Miraz. I haven't finished writing the post yet. Once done, I will add it as draft for your to review and publish. I hope that workflow works 👍🏽

@amit 😀