The current visual direction of this blog is now available as an open-source project: Liquid Stack.

Browse the repository · View the project site · Open the live demo

Liquid Stack is a complete Hugo starter built on Hugo Theme Stack v4.0.3. It keeps Stack’s dependable writing and archive experience, then extends it into a more complete personal-site framework with a Liquid Glass-inspired visual system, bilingual pages, homepage widgets, content tools, and replaceable sample material.

Why I Open-Sourced It

Many readers have told me they enjoy this blog’s design. I wanted to turn that shared interest into something useful: a real starting point that people can take, explore, and make their own.

Liquid Stack is also much more than a light edit of Stack. It is a complete website system built around one visual language, with polished homepage widgets, a comment system, a friend-link workflow, email templates, management tools, and bilingual publishing already considered together.

The public version deliberately removes private content, personal credentials, and service-specific settings. Its sample copy, avatar, links, photos, comments, and forms are there to show how each part fits together and can be replaced safely.

What Is Included

Liquid Stack adds the following around Stack’s blog foundation:

• Unified visual system: Liquid Glass-inspired surfaces, background blur, rounded-card hierarchy, Lucide line icons, and matching light/dark modes.
• Homepage widgets: profile introduction, shortcut cards, archive and category navigation, a dual world clock, and a visual entry to the launchpad, photo wall, and dashboard.
• Reading and bilingual publishing: matched English and Simplified Chinese pages, language-aware switching, bilingual sitemaps, XML sitemaps, search, and a 404 entry point.
• Project and personal-site pages: a configurable launchpad, draggable photo wall, complete About-page layout, and a content-statistics dashboard.
• Management and interaction: a management menu, Sveltia CMS, theme-matched Waline comments, friend-link application workflow, deployment and analytics shortcuts, plus reusable email templates.

Start from the Template

1. Select Use this template on GitHub to create your own repository.
2. Update the site name, URL, sidebar copy, social links, and language settings in hugo.yaml.
3. Replace the sample identity and assets under static/img/liquid-stack/, then update the launchpad, photo wall, and friend-link data as needed.
4. Preview locally with hugo server -D.
5. Build the production site with hugo --minify --cleanDestinationDir --ignoreCache and deploy the generated public directory through your preferred host.

The project site includes visual screenshots and a concise overview. The demo is the fastest way to see the complete interaction flow before changing anything.

Before You Publish

Replace every sample name, image, public link, and placeholder before treating the site as your own. Do not commit access tokens, API keys, email credentials, private URLs, or personal contact information to a public repository.

Comments, CMS editing, forms, analytics, and deployment integrations each require your own configuration. The demo comments and form flows are presentation examples only; they do not store a visitor’s submission. If you enable Waline or email notifications, use your own service endpoint and review the included configuration examples before publishing.

A Starting Point, Not a Finished Identity

Liquid Stack is meant to save time on the framework while leaving the important decisions open: what you write about, how you introduce yourself, which tools you connect, and what visual material represents your space.

If you build something with it, I hope the template gives you a calm place to start and enough room to make it unmistakably yours.