Felmdrav - A Hugo Theme

Felmdrav is a clean and minimalistic Hugo theme, built on the Bootstrap v5 CSS framework.

Felmdrav originates from Tikva, a theme originally developed by the author for Grav CMS and later ported to Hugo. The Hugo version of Tikva was based on Bootstrap 4 and selectively incorporated concepts from a parallel Bootstrap-based WordPress implementation of the same theme.

The Tikva theme for Hugo remains available but is now considered deprecated.

When migrating the Hugo theme from Bootstrap 4 to Bootstrap 5, it became clear that the required changes would not be backward-compatible. In addition to the framework upgrade, several structural improvements were introduced, including a more flexible grid system, configurable sidebars, updated icon handling, and additional content blocks.

To clearly distinguish this modernized Hugo theme from its predecessor, the project was renamed to Felmdrav, which is now the Bootstrap 5–based successor of Tikva for Hugo.

Philosophy

Felmdrav aims to stay:

• minimal in structure
• explicit in configuration
• easy to reason about
• flexible without becoming complex

Most layout behavior is controlled through clear configuration options, avoiding hidden defaults or implicit logic wherever possible.

Features

• Responsive, mobile-first design based on Bootstrap 5
• Flexible grid system using Bootstrap’s 12-column layout
• Configurable sidebars with global defaults and per-page overrides
• Support for one-, two- and three-column layouts
• Integration of Bootstrap Icons (no Font Awesome dependency)
• Multiple built-in visual styles, including selected Bootswatch themes
• Reusable content blocks (e.g. hero sections, feature/icon blocks)
• Context-aware content listing system with recursive sections, sorting, and aggregation via front matter
• Customizable typography settings, including Google Fonts support
• Flexible footer and optional subfooter areas
• Optional analytics integration (Google Analytics, Matomo)
• Support for custom CSS and JavaScript via placeholder partials

Felmdrav requires Hugo ≥ 0.146.0, as it is based on the new directory and template structure introduced in recent Hugo versions.

Demo

A live demo of the theme, based on the included exampleSite, is available here:

https://geschke.github.io/hugo-felmdrav/.

Quick Start

Install the theme

Inside the themes directory of your Hugo site, clone the repository:

cd themes
git clone https://github.com/geschke/hugo-felmdrav.git

Alternatively, you can add the theme as a Git submodule:

git submodule add https://github.com/geschke/hugo-felmdrav themes/hugo-felmdrav

Then reference the theme in your site configuration:

theme = "hugo-felmdrav"

Run the example site

The repository includes a fully configured exampleSite which demonstrates the available features of the theme.

From the repository root, run:

hugo server \
  --source exampleSite \
  --themesDir .. \
  --theme hugo-felmdrav

Then open:

http://localhost:1313/

Documentation

Detailed documentation is available in the /docs directory:

• Configuration
• Layout & Sidebars
• Footer & Subfooter (Sections)
• Content Blocks
• Content Lists
• Typography
• Image Processing
• Analytics
• Menus & Taxonomies
• Migration from Tikva

License

Open sourced under the MIT license.

Contributing

If you find a bug or have an idea for a feature, feel free to use the issue tracker to let me know.

Thanks to / Used third-party components

• The Bootstrap project, which is licensed under the MIT license
• Bootstrap Icons
• Thomas Park and the contributors of the Bootswatch project
• Image render hook from hugo-theme-bootstrap by Razon Yang