Hyde

Hyde is one of the oldest and most respected Jekyll themes, created by Mark Otto — the same person who built Bootstrap. Its reputation is fully deserved. The two-column layout with a fixed dark sidebar is immediately distinctive, and the content area is so restrained that the typography itself becomes the design.

Built on Poole (Otto’s Jekyll base), Hyde strips back everything that isn’t essential. There are no JavaScript dependencies, no heavy CSS frameworks, no plugin requirements. The result is a site that loads instantly and looks good doing it. Eight colour scheme variations are available through a single config option — swap from charcoal to slate blue or brick red without touching a line of CSS.

The sidebar holds your site name, description, and navigation links. That’s it. On mobile it collapses to the top and the layout becomes single-column without any loss of readability. A reverse layout option flips the sidebar to the right for those who prefer it.

Who is it for? Writers and bloggers who want a timeless, distraction-free reading experience built by someone who clearly understands what good web typography looks like.

Installation

# Add to your Gemfile:
gem "jekyll-theme-hyde"

# Or fork directly:
git clone https://github.com/poole/hyde.git