Introducing vanam-erudite
A fork of astro-erudite v2 with a bento homepage, gallery support, cross-collection tags, Giscus comments, and more.
astro-erudite v2 is a minimal, opinionated blogging template by jktrn. It gives you a blog, projects, an about page, and a sidebar — everything you need to start writing. But I wanted more: a richer homepage, a gallery, comments, and deeper tag integration without adding weight.
So I forked it into vanam-erudite.
What changed
- Bento grid homepage — replaces the stock dictionary entry with a two-column card layout: hero profile, latest posts, auto-cycling gallery slideshow, projects, and live time/weather.
- Gallery system — a full content collection with listing pages, photo lightbox, prev/next navigation, and year-grouped index.
- Giscus comments — GitHub Discussions-backed comments on blog posts, with theme syncing and View Transition support.
- Umami analytics — privacy-first, cookieless, loads only when configured.
- Cross-collection tags — tags on blog posts, galleries, and projects, with a unified tag index and detail pages.
- Text reveal animation — character-by-character opacity reveal on the hero bio.
- Weather widget — live data from wttr.in, no API key required.
- Anthropic-influenced design — muted utility text, monospace metadata, accent elements that guide without decoration.
Everything follows the same principle as the base template: minimal JavaScript, native CSS, no unnecessary dependencies. Giscus and Umami are optional — the site works fully without them.
Check out the template at vanam-erudite2.vercel.app or the source on GitHub.