This post is a short field guide for personalizing Project Spore without disturbing its quiet, botanical character.

Project Spore is meant to feel personal, calm, and alive. Like any living archive, every specimen, label, and accent can be adjusted to reflect the identity of its caretaker. Most first changes can happen in hugo.toml and content/posts/, with deeper visual refinements waiting in the stylesheet and layout partials.

1. Specimen labeling: changing your profile image and title

Your homepage acts as the front gate of the garden. Start in hugo.toml, inside the params.profileMode section:

  • imageUrl Place your image in static/ and reference it by filename. Example: imageUrl = "spore.png"

  • title This becomes the main title on the homepage.

  • subtitle Use this space to describe the atmosphere, focus, or publishing philosophy of your site.

You will usually want to update baseURL, params.description, and the menu.main labels at the same time so the starter kit immediately reads as your own archive rather than the bundled demo.

2. Decorative elements: the botanical divider

Project Spore includes a divider shortcode for gentle pauses between sections of writing.

Use it directly inside Markdown:

{{< spore-divider >}}

The divider keeps the ornamental feel of the kit without requiring raw HTML in your notes or essays.

3. Calls to action: the spore button

If you want a gentle call to action, Project Spore includes a .spore-button class that matches the existing palette.

<a href="/posts/" class="spore-button">Explore the Garden</a>

The button uses the same border, tone, and hover language as the rest of the theme, so it feels intentional rather than bolted on.

Project Spore also includes a botanical callout and a specimen card shortcode for gentle emphasis inside longer notes. Those work best when used sparingly, like labels in a field journal rather than promotional blocks.

4. Advanced color personalization

For deeper visual adjustments, edit the color variables in assets/css/extended/custom.css:

  • --primary
  • --secondary
  • --tertiary
  • --highlight
  • --theme

These tokens control the overall identity of the theme, so a few measured changes can create an entirely different species of garden without rewriting the layout system.

Keep your first pass small. In Project Spore, restraint usually looks more premium than excess.