Marginalia website theme

Calm and bookish, made for reading long text: Literata on warm unbleached paper, ink-blue links, letter-spaced small sans labels and wide quiet margins.

A real website on WebNesting. Click around: forms show how they work, and nothing you send is kept.

About Marginalia

Colors

Main color
Accent color
Page background
Card background
Text color

Made for

Marginalia was made with a writer site in mind. The preview above opens on the demo's Writer site.

Fonts

Headings and text in Literata.

Light and dark

Marginalia has a light and a dark version. Your site can use either one, or let visitors pick.

Header and footer

Header Logo left. Your logo on the left, your menu on the right.
Footer Three columns. Your logo, social links and details on the left, the menu in columns beside them.

You can switch to another header or footer layout at any time in Site Settings.

Page backgrounds

Marginalia comes with page backgrounds to switch on in Site Settings, under Appearance. Your site starts on the one marked default. Use See it to open the preview above on any of them. Some of them move. Motion is optional: a moving background stays still for visitors whose device asks for less motion, and a pause button stops it.

Light

Dark

Plain color (default) Just the page color, with no pattern or picture. See it (Plain color (default)) in the preview
Light

Dark

Laid paper Fine horizontal laid lines and a soft warm glow, like good writing paper. Stays still. See it (Laid paper) in the preview
Light

Dark

Lamplight Two soft pools of warm light, like a desk lamp in a quiet room. They drift very slowly. You can pause the movement. Moves slowly. Motion is optional. See it (Lamplight) in the preview

Sections made for Marginalia

In the Website Builder, Marginalia's own sections are in the Add panel under "Made for your site's design", next to the sections every theme has. They show while your site uses Marginalia.

Hero Featured essay, title and wide photo
Features Essay list, dateline, title and summary
Call to action Email sign-up, straw band with the form
Contact Talks, classes and essays, labels in the margin
About Author note, portrait and three margin notes
About Book spotlight, cover beside a blurb and a reader's line

Every color, font and size can be changed after you start.

Want to build with Marginalia?

Join the waitlist for an invitation. You can switch themes, or change its colors and fonts, at any time.

Join the waitlist