Hugo Book Theme

May 22, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Hugo License: MIT Build with Hugo

Hugo documentation theme as simple as plain book

Screenshot

Features

  • Clean simple design
  • Light and Mobile-Friendly
  • Multi-language support
  • Customisable
  • Zero initial configuration
  • Handy shortcodes
  • Comments support
  • Simple blog and taxonomy
  • Primary features work without JavaScript
  • Dark Mode

Requirements

  • Hugo extended edition, v0.158 or higher

Quick Start

Use the starter repository:

git clone https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book-starter my-docs
cd my-docs
git submodule update --init --remote
hugo server --minify

Documentation

Example site is self-documenting at book.alxs.dev

Versioning

This theme follows a simple incremental versioning by updating minor SemVer version v0.13.0, v0.14.0 and so on. Breaking changes are expected between releases. Note that previously theme used simple v1-v11 versioning, but switch was made for better hugo modules support.

If you want lower maintenance, use one of the released versions. If you want to live on the bleeding edge of changes, you can use the main branch and update your website when needed, this also the default branch.

Contributing

Extra credits to contributors

Contributions are welcome and I will review and consider pull requests.
Primary goals are:

  • Keep it simple.
  • Keep minimal (or zero) default configuration.
  • Avoid interference with user-defined layouts.
  • Avoid using JS if it can be solved by CSS.