Little Ghost (Technical Documentation and Hugo Theme)

Description

I developed Little Ghost, a simple theme for the static site generator and content management framework Hugo. Designed for blogs and portfolio websites, the theme offers Hugo’s powerful content management features in an easy and aesthetically pleasing design.

The theme, available on Github, showcases two of my skills:

• Technical documentation.
• Web design.

Since this project represents two distinct skill-sets, I’ve provided two separate project narratives below.

Little Ghost: Technical Documentation

I had three goals when I decided to create Little Ghost.

1. Simplifying: I have spent many years using static site generators. I enjoy immersing myself in the technical documentation for platforms like Jekyll and Hugo, and over time I have internalized a great deal of technical knowledge related to these platforms. But I know that not everyone feels similarly about technical pursuits, and I wanted a theme that would offer simplicity for users.
2. Learning: I wanted to use this project to expand my understanding not only of web design (see below) but also of how to communicate technical concerns in documentation.
3. Sharing: Perhaps obviously, I wanted to share what I learned in designing the theme.

Based on these goals, the technical documentation was central to the project.

I chose to write the documentation in AsciiDoc for a simple reason to learn a less familiar writing tool. In the process, I found several benefits, such as:

• Using AsciiDoc’s admonitions to provide an additional layer of information to users.
• Employing the conditional logic available in AsciiDoc syntax. (For example, I used conditional statements to format the document correctly and logically on GitHub.)
• Applying syntax highlighting, making code blocks easier to understand.

Little Ghost: Hugo Theme

I created the theme using HTML5/CSS as well as Go, the programming language on which Hugo is built. I started the project with Bootstrap, which I’ve used in the past, but ultimately switched to Tailwind CSS, which would make installing the theme more straightforward for users.

Little Ghost showcases several of my skills:

• Web design.
  • HTML / CSS
  • Tailwind CSS
• General programming knowledge.
  • Go
  • Node Package Manager
• Technical research.
• Content management.
  • Hugo