I like the PaperMod theme, but I don’t want it to look like the PaperMod theme. Or at least not like everyone else’s PaperMod theme. It’s just that I suck at layout/CSS so if I decide to dive in I’ll get frustrated and things will break.

Right now I’ve installed the theme as a Hugo “module”. This is an easy way to do it, but it might be too much an abstraction for my taste. Another option is to check it out as a git submodule, but that has its own issues.

A third option, and the one I’m considering, is to install the theme in my themes/ folder but not as a submodule. I’ll just roll it right into my repo and pretend it’s mine :). This makes updates more work since it’ll no longer be a simple “hugo mod -u” or “git submodule update –recursive –remote”. I’ll need to diff and merge by hand. This is fine, since sometimes themes break after updates.

This way I’ll have local copies of all of the theme’s templates and I can edit them at will.