Built-in Themes
Baan ships with 7 themes covering a range of visual styles — from clean and minimal to full terminal aesthetics. You can switch themes instantly using the live Customizer, which previews how your blog looks across desktop, tablet, and mobile breakpoints before you apply any change.
Every built-in theme ships with its design prompts bundled in prompts/concept.md. You can read the original intent behind each theme, fork a theme by editing its prompt, or feed the prompt to any AI agent to regenerate a variation. See Creating Themes → Theme Provenance for details.
How to Switch Themes
Section titled “How to Switch Themes”- Go to Admin → Customizer
- Click a theme name to preview it in the iframe
- Use the viewport toggles (Desktop / Tablet / Mobile) to check responsiveness
- Click Save to apply the theme to your live site
No rebuild or restart required — the theme change takes effect immediately.
The 7 Built-in Themes
Section titled “The 7 Built-in Themes”default
Section titled “default”A clean, modern layout with top navigation and a right sidebar. The right sidebar shows a table of contents for long articles and an author card. Good for general-purpose blogs where readability and convention are priorities.
Style: Light, generous whitespace, sans-serif typography
A technical, text-focused theme inspired by terminal aesthetics — but still web-native. No rounded corners, dense typography, and a preference for monospace accents. Good for developer blogs, technical writing, and audiences who prefer substance over visual flair.
Style: High-density, minimal decoration, technical feel
A high-density layout inspired by newspaper websites like the Wall Street Journal. Multiple columns, serif typography, article cards in a grid, and clear visual hierarchy. Best for sites with a high volume of posts across multiple categories.
Style: Dense grid, serif fonts, editorial feel
the-publish
Section titled “the-publish”Inspired by Obsidian Publish — a left sidebar with tree navigation, ideal for knowledge bases, documentation, and writers who maintain a networked body of work. Articles link to each other naturally and the sidebar shows the full structure.
Style: Left sidebar, tree nav, knowledge-base feel
monograph
Section titled “monograph”A reading-focused theme with ultra-clean typography and a thin fixed header. Designed for long-form writing — wide content area, generous line height, and no visual distractions. Includes a right sidebar with a reading progress tracker and auto-generated table of contents on article pages.
Style: Minimal black & white, reading-first, thin header
A calm, spacious theme with a warm gray background and white card tiles on list pages. Article pages use a white background with a left-side table of contents. A middle ground between minimal and editorial — modern without being stark.
Style: Warm gray background, spacious cards, left-side TOC
terminal
Section titled “terminal”A full command-line aesthetic. The entire UI mimics a terminal — monospace fonts throughout, command-prompt-style navigation, and a dark base. For writers who want their blog to feel like a piece of software rather than a publication.
Style: Monospace everywhere, command-line UI, dark
Applying Additional Customization
Section titled “Applying Additional Customization”Beyond switching themes, the Customizer also lets you configure:
- Featured image display — show or hide cover images on article cards and post pages
- Navbar navigation — add links to the top navigation bar
- Footer navigation — add links to the footer
These settings apply on top of the active theme and persist when you switch themes.