letsblaze

Tags and Taxonomy

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze supports Hugo’s built-in taxonomy system. Tags are the primary taxonomy.

Adding tags to a post

In front matter:

---
title: "My Post"
tags: ["hugo", "web", "html"]
---

Tag pages

Every tag automatically gets a listing page at /tags/TAG-NAME/ showing all posts with that tag, with pagination.

The tags index at /tags/ lists all tags ordered by post count.

RSS per tag

Hugo generates an RSS feed for each tag automatically:

/tags/hugo/index.xml

This lets readers subscribe to specific topics rather than the full blog feed.

Working with Images

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze handles images with a custom render hook that adds <figure> and <figcaption> support and automatic dimension detection for page-bundle images.

Page bundles

The recommended way to use images is as page bundles — store the image alongside the content file:

content/
 blog/
 working-with-images/
 index.md ← this file
 hero.jpg ← image in the same directory

This is a leaf bundle. Hugo can read the image dimensions at build time and emit width and height attributes automatically, preventing layout shift (CLS).

Code and Syntax Highlighting

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze uses Hugo’s built-in Chroma syntax highlighter, configured to emit inline styles rather than CSS classes. This means syntax highlighting works with no external stylesheet — consistent with the theme’s no-external-resources philosophy.

Inline code

Wrap short code references in backticks: const x = 42.

Fenced code blocks

Use triple backticks with a language identifier:

def greet(name: str) -> str:
 return f"Hello, {name}"

print(greet("world"))

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
 <head>
 <meta charset="utf-8">
 <title>Example</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <p>Hello, world.</p>
 </body>
</html>

hugo new blog/my-post.md
hugo server --buildDrafts
hugo --minify

Syntax style

letsblaze is opinionated: the default Chroma style is monochrome. This works in both light and dark mode without maintaining two colour palettes.

Writing Content

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze renders standard Markdown with a few additions. This post covers everything available when writing content.

Headings

<h1> is reserved for the page title, rendered automatically by the theme. Use <h2> through <h6> for section headings within content.

H2

H3

H4

H5

H6

Lists

Ordered and unordered lists render with clean browser defaults.

First item
Second item
Third item

Unordered item
Another item
And another

Blockquotes

The web is for everyone. Build accordingly.

Configuration

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

All letsblaze configuration lives in hugo.toml. Below is a complete reference for every supported parameter.

Top-level settings

Key	Recommended value	Notes
`languageCode`	`en-US`	Use BCP 47 format with uppercase region subtag
`enableEmoji`	`true`	Enables `:shortcode:` emoji syntax in content
`enableGitInfo`	`true`	Sets `lastmod` in sitemap from git commit dates
`disableHugoGeneratorInject`	`false`	letsblaze keeps the Hugo generator tag intentionally

Pagination

[pagination]
 pagerSize = 10

Markup

[markup.goldmark.renderer]
 unsafe = true # required for shortcodes like <kbd>, <del>, <mark>

[markup.highlight]
 noClasses = true # required — letsblaze has no external CSS
 style = "monochrome"

Theme params

[params]
 author = "Your Name"
 copyright = "Your Name" # falls back to site title if not set
 description = "Site description" # used in meta tags and homepage
 dateFormat = "2006-01-02" # Go reference time format
 homepagePostCount = 5 # recent posts shown on homepage
 showThemeCredit = true # set false to hide "Theme: letsblaze" in footer
 # ogImage = "/og-image.png" # path to default OG image in static/

Menus

Navigation items are defined in hugo.toml:

Features

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No JavaScript

letsblaze ships zero client-side JavaScript. All interactive behaviour uses native HTML elements (<details>, <summary>) or CSS (prefers-color-scheme, aria-current).

No external resources

No external stylesheets, no web fonts, no CDN calls. All styles are inline. Every page is self-contained.

Dark mode

Dark mode is automatic — it follows the system prefers-color-scheme preference. No toggle, no JavaScript, no cookie. It just works.

Syntax highlighting

Code blocks are highlighted at build time using Hugo’s Chroma highlighter with inline styles. The default style is monochrome. See Configuration for how to change it.

Installation

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze requires Hugo 0.134.0 or later. Run hugo version to check.

Option 1 — Git submodule (recommended)

cd your-hugo-site
git submodule add https://github.com/thomaslaurenson/letsblaze themes/letsblaze

In hugo.toml:

theme = "letsblaze"

To update the theme later:

git submodule update --remote --merge

Option 2 — Hugo module

Initialise your site as a Hugo module if you haven’t already:

hugo mod init github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-SITE

In hugo.toml:

[module]
 [[module.imports]]
 path = "github.com/thomaslaurenson/letsblaze"

Pull the module:

hugo mod get

Option 3 — Manual download

Download the repository as a zip from GitHub and extract it into themes/letsblaze/. Set theme = "letsblaze" in hugo.toml.

Markdown Reference

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A reference for all Markdown elements supported by letsblaze. Use this page to verify rendering before writing content.

Headings

<h1> is reserved for the page title. Use <h2> to <h6> in content.

H2

H3

H4

H5

H6

Paragraph

Standard paragraph text. Separate paragraphs with a blank line. Line breaks within a paragraph are collapsed to a space unless you end a line with two spaces or a backslash.

Blockquotes

Single-level blockquote.

Welcome to letsblaze

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

letsblaze is a Hugo theme built on one principle: the fastest resource is one that was never requested.

No JavaScript. No external stylesheets. No web fonts. No CDN calls. Every page is HTML with a small inline style block. Nothing else ships to the browser.

Why no JavaScript

JavaScript is powerful and often necessary. It is also the single largest contributor to slow page loads across the web. For a blog or documentation site, there is almost nothing that JavaScript provides that semantic HTML cannot handle.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Thomas Laurenson — a developer who thinks the web works best when it is fast, readable, and honest about what it is.

letsblaze is the theme I built for my own site. It has no JavaScript, no external stylesheets, no web fonts, and no CDN dependencies. Every page is plain HTML with a small inline style block. That is the entire stack.

The name comes from the idea that a site should be genuinely fast — not fast after optimisation, but fast by default because there is nothing to slow it down.