Lanyon

A content-first Jekyll theme with a hidden sliding sidebar. Navigation stays out of the way until you need it, keeping all focus on your writing. Built on Poole with 8 colour schemes.

Mark Otto Updated Jul 23, 2024

About this Theme

Lanyon is the theme that proved content-first design was possible in Jekyll. Created by Mark Otto (co-creator of Bootstrap) and built on his Poole foundation, Lanyon solves a fundamental problem with blog themes: navigation and chrome getting in the way of the actual reading experience.

The solution is elegant — all navigation is hidden inside a drawer that slides in from the left when the hamburger icon is clicked. The rest of the time, your content fills the entire viewport. No sidebar competing for attention, no sticky nav eating vertical space — just your words.

Eight colour themes (based on the base16 colour scheme) let you personalise the sidebar background and link colours without touching CSS. Switch from the default white to deep teal, orange, red, or slate with a single class on the <body> element.

Lanyon has been forked over 2,900 times and powers thousands of personal blogs and developer sites. Its influence on Jekyll theme design is hard to overstate.

Who is it for? Writers and bloggers who want their content to be the undivided focus, with clean, distraction-free reading as the primary design goal.

Features

Hidden sliding sidebar drawer

Content-first design philosophy

8 optional colour schemes via body classes

Left or right sidebar orientation

Built on Poole for clean Jekyll defaults

Dynamic navigation with active link support

RSS feed included

Syntax highlighting

Mobile responsive