# So … I built my own theme

It’s called tranquil 😄.

You might think: didn’t you just release this blog? Yes, that’s right. At launch I already used a great theme called Serene. I liked the theme a lot but wanted to change it a bit which I had some troubles with. The Serene theme is made with a very common pattern where each component has their own separate CSS class. This means there is a lot of overlap in the content of the CSS classes. The classes also used a bit too much pixel padding values for my liking. I had also wanted to try out Tailwind for a while, so I figured that re-implementing Serene in Tailwind would be the perfect opportunity!

The result is called Tranquil. The main feel is still the same as Serene, but there are some differences. The main difference is the styling: all styles have been rewritten/reimagined in Tailwind. Besides this, the Table Of Contents has also changed quite a bit: Serene uses a sidebar, but the CSS to accomplish this uses a lot of CSS black magic to work. I went for a simpler implementation by putting the TOC at the top of the article. One of the best things about Serene is that it had features that to me had a right balance between added complexity and minimalism: a projects page, image zooming, some callouts and extra syntax using KaTeX and Mermaid. The thing I was most surprised about was the comment system which uses Giscus. Giscus enables comments despite the website being static and not having a backend. It accomplishes this by “abusing” the Github discussion feature. This feature is meant to enable discussion on repositories, but Giscus uses it as a backend for its comment system. It works like a charm and means I don’t need to handle account logins and storage, which is always a plus.

The theme wouldn’t have been possible without Isunjns Serene theme, which stands on its own. I also got a lot of inspiration from FasterThanLimes blog which is very well designed and has great articles, so go check that out as well.

And if anyone remembers: yes, I haven’t forgotten my Linux article. It has been posted simultaneously with this article :).