Looking for a fast, clean, and professional blog design powered by Jekyll? The Mediumish theme is one of the most popular open-source Jekyll themes inspired by Medium.com’s elegant layout. In this guide, you'll learn how to clone the Mediumish theme from GitHub and get it up and running on your local machine in just a few minutes — even if you're a complete beginner.

Why Choose Mediumish?

The Mediumish theme by WowThemes offers a modern, minimalist design that emphasizes readability and performance. It's perfect for bloggers, writers, and developers who want a sleek blog without dealing with bloated WordPress setups.

Key Features:

• Responsive layout that works across devices
• Optimized for SEO and speed
• Easy to customize via configuration files
• MIT-licensed and free to use

Prerequisites

What You'll Need:

• A GitHub account
• Basic familiarity with command line (not mandatory)
• Ruby and Jekyll installed (we’ll cover this in the next part)

Step 1: Find the Official Repository

The Mediumish theme is hosted on GitHub by WowThemes. You can find it at:

https://github.com/wowthemesnet/mediumish-theme-jekyll

Step 2: Clone the Repository

Option 1: Using Git (Recommended)

If you have Git installed, open your terminal and run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/wowthemesnet/mediumish-theme-jekyll.git

This will create a folder named mediumish-theme-jekyll with all the theme files.

Option 2: Download as ZIP

If you’re not comfortable with Git yet, you can manually download the repository:

1. Go to the GitHub repository page
2. Click the green “Code” button
3. Select “Download ZIP”
4. Unzip the downloaded file to any folder

Step 3: Explore the Theme Structure

Once cloned, take a moment to explore the directory. You'll find the following:

• _posts/ – Your blog posts will live here
• _layouts/ – Page templates used across the site
• _includes/ – Reusable components like headers and footers
• _config.yml – The main configuration file
• index.html – The homepage

Don’t worry if this looks unfamiliar — we’ll dive deeper into each part in the next article.

Step 4: Run It Locally (Optional)

You can preview the theme on your computer, but this requires Ruby and Jekyll. If you're not ready to install those yet, you can still move ahead and deploy it directly to GitHub Pages — we’ll cover both options in the next parts of this series.

If You Have Jekyll Installed:

cd mediumish-theme-jekyll
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Then visit http://localhost:4000 in your browser to see the blog.

What’s Next?

Congratulations! You now have the Mediumish theme on your computer. In the next article, we’ll cover how to install Jekyll and configure your environment properly to run the blog locally and begin customizing it.

Next Step: “Setting Up Jekyll Locally to Run the Mediumish Theme”

Cloning the Mediumish theme from GitHub is the perfect first step toward launching your own elegant blog with minimal effort. Whether you're a solo blogger or building a professional portfolio, this theme provides a solid foundation. Stay tuned for the rest of the series as we guide you through customizing, publishing, and optimizing your new site.