hexo-theme-mingyue

A Hexo theme inspired by the traditional Chinese vertical book layout. Text flows top-to-bottom, right-to-left, replicating the reading experience of a classical Chinese manuscript with parchment textures, ink tones, and brush-red accents.

Features

• Vertical right-to-left text -- content is rendered in writing-mode: vertical-rl, the native reading direction of classical Chinese
• Traditional Chinese date formatting -- dates displayed in Tiangan-Dizhi (Heavenly Stems & Earthly Branches) notation with Chinese numerals
• Lenticular bracket titles -- all titles are automatically wrapped in「」brackets
• CJK punctuation highlighting -- punctuation marks rendered in brush-red for typographic emphasis
• Western text rotation -- Latin and numeric text automatically rotated for proper display within vertical columns
• Book-cover title panel -- sidebar styled as a traditional book cover with navigation and social links
• Classical aesthetic -- warm parchment background, ink-dark text, subtle radial gradients, and earth-tone borders
• Responsive layout -- three breakpoints (1200px, 900px, 600px) adjusting column dimensions and spacing
• i18n support -- Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean localizations included
• Social links -- GitHub, X/Twitter, Mastodon, Telegram, Weibo, Zhihu (via Font Awesome icons)
• Zero build dependencies -- pure Hexo + EJS + SCSS, no additional tooling required

Installation

Clone the theme into your Hexo site's themes directory:

cd your-hexo-site
git clone https://github.com/aeilot/hexo-theme-mingyue.git themes/hexo-theme-mingyue

Then set the theme in your site's _config.yml:

theme: hexo-theme-mingyue

Configuration

Create or edit _config.mingyue.yml in the theme directory. The theme automatically loads this file and merges it into the Hexo theme config.

Full default configuration

section:
  posts: true
  tags: false
  footer:
    enabled: true
    title: "未启新卷"

home:
  posts:
    limit: 8
    show_excerpt: true
    show_date: true
    show_tags: false
    excerpt_length: 120
  tags:
    limit: 24

bio:
  title: "明月"
  description: "古调虽自爱，今人多不弹。"
  links:
    - name: "文摘"
      url: "/"
    - name: "关于"
      url: "/about/"
    - name: "归档"
      url: "/archives/"
  social_links:
    - name: "github"
      label: "GitHub"
      url: "https://github.com/yourname"
      enabled: true
    - name: "telegram"
      label: "Telegram"
      url: "https://t.me/yourname"
      enabled: true
    - name: "twitter"
      label: "Twitter"
      url: "https://x.com/yourname"
      enabled: true

style:
  accent_red: "#a31f1f"
  paper_bg: "#f7f1e3"
  ink_text: "#2d241c"
  border_ink: "#8b7355"

footer:
  custom_text: ""

content:
  sideways:
    western_enabled: true

Configuration reference

Option	Type	Default	Description
section.posts	boolean	true	Show posts section on the home page
section.tags	boolean	false	Show tags section on the home page
section.footer.enabled	boolean	true	Show footer section on the home page
section.footer.title	string	"未启新卷"	Footer column title
home.posts.limit	number	8	Number of posts displayed on the home page
home.posts.show_excerpt	boolean	true	Show post excerpts
home.posts.show_date	boolean	true	Show post dates
home.posts.show_tags	boolean	false	Show post tags on the home page
home.posts.excerpt_length	number	120	Maximum excerpt length in characters
home.tags.limit	number	24	Maximum number of tags to display
bio.title	string	"明月"	Site title shown in the title panel
bio.description	string		Site description / motto
bio.links	array		Navigation links (name + url)
bio.social_links	array		Social links (name, label, url, enabled)
style.accent_red	color	#a31f1f	Accent color for punctuation and highlights
style.paper_bg	color	#f7f1e3	Page background color
style.ink_text	color	#2d241c	Main text color
style.border_ink	color	#8b7355	Border and divider color
footer.custom_text	string	""	Custom footer text
content.sideways.western_enabled	boolean	true	Rotate Western text inline in vertical columns

Supported social links

name value	Icon
github	GitHub
twitter / x	X (Twitter)
mastodon	Mastodon
telegram	Telegram
weibo	Weibo
zhihu	Zhihu
(any other)	Generic link

Languages

Set the language in your site's _config.yml:

language: zh-CN

Supported values: zh-CN, zh-TW, ja, ko.

Directory structure

hexo-theme-mingyue/
├── _config.mingyue.yml        # Theme configuration
├── index.js                   # Hexo helper registrations
├── scripts/
│   ├── helpers.js             # Date formatting, bracket titles, excerpts
│   └── load-theme-config.js   # Config file loader
├── layout/
│   ├── layout.ejs             # Base HTML shell
│   ├── index.ejs              # Home page
│   ├── post.ejs               # Single post
│   ├── page.ejs               # Generic page
│   ├── archive.ejs            # Archive listing
│   ├── tag.ejs                # Tag listing
│   ├── category.ejs           # Category listing
│   └── partial/               # Reusable partials
├── source/
│   ├── css/                   # SCSS stylesheets
│   └── js/                    # Client-side scripts
└── languages/                 # i18n files

License

MIT