Built to make your community seen and famous
Popular is a warm, community-first theme for meetups, clubs and fan communities, created by a serial conference organizer who's run the real thing. Events, blog, organizers, an ops handbook with persistent checklists, multi-author posts, and every colour and font set from one config file.
Everything a community site needs
Built from years of organizing real conferences and meetups, not a generic blog theme with an events page bolted on. Every feature exists because a community needed it.
Events, done right
Events split automatically into upcoming and past, with speaker profile cards, venue pages that carry arrival notes (buzz codes and all), check-in instructions, RSVP buttons and a 'venue wanted' state.
Handbook & runbooks
A docs layout with scroll-tracking TOC and checklists that remember progress in the browser, turn your ops knowledge into a living playbook.
Batteries included
Command-line tools import your events, speakers and venues from the platforms you already plan in. Not copy-paste, not magic: the busywork, scripted.
Agent & human friendly
AGENTS.md is included: repo layout, build commands, content rules and the known gotchas, one playbook that AI coding agents and humans follow alike.
Organizers & community
Team pages, get-involved flows, code of conduct, land-acknowledgement slot, and a warm voice throughout.
Multi-author blog
Author profiles with bio, photo and socials; multiple authors per post; one-off guest writers inline, with linkbacks to profile pages.
Config-first theming
Change primary colour, fonts, surfaces and radii in one config block. Soft tints and hovers derive automatically, no CSS edits.
Alt text, required
Accessibility is not optional here: CI builds every site and fails the moment any image ships without meaningful alt text.
Hugo & Astro, in parity
Two implementations, one contract: identical CSS, JS, content model and demos, documented in PARITY.md and enforced by CI.
Who maintains Popular
Popular is maintained in the open, for Hugo and Astro alike.
Multi-award-winning open source contributor and serial conference organizer. Started Popular after one too many community sites rebuilt from scratch: it's everything she's learned about what a community needs from its website, in one theme.
Your community's site, live this afternoon
Copy a demo, change one config file, add your content. That's the whole workflow.