Documentation on Northlight

Getting started

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Northlight needs Hugo extended 0.164.0 or newer and nothing else. No Node, no npm, no CSS framework, no build step beyond Hugo itself.

Install#

As a submodule, which is the route that needs no Go toolchain:

Configuration

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Config flows one way: site.Params into _partials/init.html, which resolves defaults once, and out to the templates. Templates read resolved values and never re-derive a default inline, so every default below lives in exactly one place in the source.

Writing content

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything on this page is either standard Markdown or a render hook that enriches it, so the same files render fine anywhere, just plainer. Nothing here locks a post to this theme, and that is deliberate: prefer these over a shortcode wherever both would work.

Shortcodes

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything on this page is rendered by the theme as you read it. Nothing below is a screenshot or a code sample pretending to be output.

The trade you are making#

A shortcode is theme-specific syntax. Content written with one renders correctly inside this theme and nowhere else — move the post to another theme, or to a plain Markdown renderer, and you get the raw {{< … >}} text back. That is a real cost, and it is why Writing content is the page to read first: admonitions, responsive images, captions, code filenames and tables are all render hooks over standard Markdown, so they cost you nothing and they are the better answer wherever they fit.

Appearance

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The theme is named after north light: the soft, even, neutral light from a north-facing window that has no glare and stays consistent all day. That is the whole design brief.

Integrations

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The theme makes no third-party requests by default. Fonts are self-hosted, there are no CDN scripts and nothing calls home. Everything below is opt-in, and a site that configures none of it ships a page that talks to nobody.

Translating

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No user-facing string is hardcoded in a template. They all live in i18n/en.toml, so translating the theme means copying that file to your language code and translating the values. Nothing else changes.

اختبار الاتجاه

hello@example.com (Morten Victor Nordbye) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

هذه الصفحة مكتوبة بالعربية بالكامل، وهي موجودة لسبب واحد: قياس التخطيط من اليمين إلى اليسار بدلاً من افتراض أنه يعمل. كل عنصر أدناه له خاصية اتجاهية في CSS، وكل واحد منها كان سبباً محتملاً لخطأ صامت قبل أن تُقاس هذه الصفحة.