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Beautiful Jekyll
Copyright 2020 Dean Attali
Beautiful Jekyll is a ready-to-use template to help you create an awesome website quickly. Perfect for personal sites, blogs, or simple project websites. Check out a demo of what you'll get after just two minutes. You can also look at my personal website to see it in use, or see examples of websites other people created using this theme below.
If you enjoy this theme, please consider supporting me or sponsoring me for developing and maintaining it for over 5 years.
Table of contents
- Build your website in 3 steps
- Add your own content
- Last important thing: YAML front matter ("parameters" for a page)
- Features
- Showcased users (success stories!)
- Advanced: local development
- FAQ and support
- Credits and contributions
Build your website in 3 steps
Getting started is literally as easy as 1-2-3 😄
Scroll down to see the steps involved, but here is a 40-second video just as a reference as you work through the steps. If you don't already have a GitHub account, you'll need to sign up.
1. Fork this project
Fork this project by clicking the Fork button at the top right corner of this page. Forking means that you now copied this entire project and all the files into your account.
2. Rename the project to <yourusername>.github.io
Click on Settings at the top (the cog icon) and on that page you'll have an option to rename the project (repository name). This will create a website with the Beautiful Jekyll template that will be available at https://<yourusername>.github.io within a couple minutes. Check out the FAQ if you want to use a different project name.
3. Customize your website settings
Edit the _config.yml file to change any settings you want. To edit the file, click on it to view the file and then click on the pencil icon to edit it (watch the video tutorial above if you're confused). The settings in the file are self-explanatory and I added comments inside the file to help you understand what each setting does. Any line that begins with a hashtag (#) is a comment, and the other lines are actual settings.
4. Congratulations! You have your website!
After you save your changes to the config file (by clicking on Commit changes as the video tutorial shows), your website should be ready in a minute or two at https://<yourusername>.github.io. Every time you make a change to any file, your website will get rebuilt and should be updated in about a minute or so. Your website will be initialized with several sample blog posts and a couple other pages.
Note that in the video above I only edited one setting in the _config.yml file. You should actually go through the rest of the settings as well. Don't be lazy, go through all the settings :)
Add your own content
To add pages to your site, you can either write a markdown file (.md) or you can write an HTML file directly. It is much easier to write markdown than HTML, so I suggest you do that (use the tutorial I mentioned above if you need to learn markdown). You can look at some files on this site to get an idea of how to write markdown. To look at existing files, click on any file that ends in .md, for example aboutme.md. On the next page you can see some nicely formatted text (there is a word in bold, a link, bullet points), and if you click on the pencil icon to edit the file, you will see the markdown that generated the pretty text. Very easy!
In contrast, look at index.html. That's how your write HTML - not as pretty. So stick with markdown if you don't know HTML.
Any file that you add inside the _posts directory will be treated as a blog entry. You can look at the existing files there to get an idea of how to write blog posts. After you successfully add your own post, you can delete the existing files inside _posts to remove the sample posts, as those are just demo posts to help you learn.
Last important thing: YAML front matter ("parameters" for a page)
In order to have your new pages use this template and not just be plain pages, you need to add YAML front matter to the top of each page. This is where you'll give each page some parameters that I made available, such as a title and subtitle. I'll go into more detail about what parameters are available later. If you don't want to use any parameters on your new page (this also means having no title), then use the empty YAML front matter:
---
---
If you want to use any parameters, write them between the two lines. For example, you can have this at the top of a page:
---
title: Contact me
subtitle: Here you'll find all the ways to get in touch with me
---
You can look at the top of aboutme.md or index.html as more examples.
Important takeaway: ALWAYS add the YAML front matter, which is two lines with three dashes, to EVERY page. If you have any parameters, they go between the two lines. If you don't include YAML then your file will not use the template.
Features
Mobile-first
Beautiful Jekyll is designed to look great on both large-screen and small-screen (mobile) devices. Load up your site on your phone or your gigantic iMac, and the site will work well on both, though it will look slightly different.
Customizable
Many personalization settings in _config.yml, such as setting your name and site's description, changing the background colour/image, setting your avatar to add a little image in the navigation bar, customizing the links in the menus, customizing what social media links to show in the footer, etc.
Allowing users to leave comments
If you want to enable comments on your site, Beautiful Jekyll supports several different commenting platforms you can choose from: Disqus, Facebook, Utterances, and Staticman. If any of these are set in the configuration file, then all blog posts will have comments turned on by default. To turn off comments on a particular blog post, add comments: false to the YAML front matter. If you want to add comments on the bottom of a non-blog page, add comments: true to the YAML front matter.
Disqus comments
To use Disqus, simply sign up to Disqus and add your Disqus shortname to the disqus parameter in the _config.yml file.
Facebook comments
To use Facebook comments, create a Facebook app using Facebook developers, and add the Facebook App ID to the fb_comment_id parameter in _config.yml.
Utterances comments
To use Utterances comments, follow these steps: (1) Enable Issues in your GitHub repository, (2) Install the Utterances app in your repository (go to https://github.com/apps/utterances), (3) Fill in the repository parameter in the utterances section of the _config.yml file.
Staticman comments
To use Staticman, you first need to invite staticmanlab as a collaborator to your repository (by going to your repository Settings page, navigate to the Collaborators tab, and add the username staticmanlab), and then accept the invitation by going to https://staticman3.herokuapp.com/v3/connect/github/<username>/<repo-name>. Lastly, fill in the staticman parameters in the Staticman section of _config.yml. You may also choose a different Staticman instance other than staticmanlab.
Optional: You may want to configure a webhook to prevent old inactive branches (representing approved comments) from stacking up. You can refer to Staticman's documentation for details. Make sure to input the Payload URL according to your chosen endpoint. For example, the default endpoint is https://staticman3.herokuapp.com/v3/entry/github/, so the corresponding Payload URL should be https://staticman3.herokuapp.com/v1/webhook.
Adding Google Analytics to track page views
Beautiful Jekyll lets you easily add Google Analytics to all your pages. This will let you track all sorts of information about visits to your website, such as how many times each page is viewed and where (geographically) your users come from. To add Google Analytics, simply sign up to Google Analytics to obtain your Google Tracking ID, and add this tracking ID to the google_analytics parameter in _config.yml.
Sharing blog posts on social media
By default, all blog posts will have buttons at the bottom of the post to allow people to share the current page on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn. You can choose to enable/disable specific social media websites in the _config.yml file. You can also turn off the social media buttons on specific blog posts using social-share: false in the YAML front matter.
RSS feed
Beautiful Jekyll automatically generates a simple RSS feed of your blog posts, to allow others to subscribe to your posts. If you want to add a link to your RSS feed in the footer of every page, find the rss: false line in _config.yml and change it to rss: true.
Page types
- post - To write a blog post, add a markdown or HTML file in the
_postsfolder. As long as you give it YAML front matter (the two lines of three dashes), it will automatically be rendered like a blog post. Look at the existing blog post files to see examples of how to use YAML parameters in blog posts. - page - Any page outside the
_postsfolder that uses YAML front matter will have a very similar style to blog posts. - home - The home layout is meant to act as the homepage of your blog posts - it will display all your blog posts, sorted from newest to oldest. A file using the
homelayout must be namedindex.html(notindex.mdor anything else!). - minimal - If you want to create a page with minimal styling (ie. without the bulky navigation bar and footer), assign
layout: minimalto the YAML front matter. - If you want to completely bypass the template engine and just write your own HTML page, simply omit the YAML front matter. Only do this if you know how to write HTML!
YAML front matter parameters
These are the main parameters you can place inside a page's YAML front matter that Beautiful Jekyll supports.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| title | Page or blog post title |
| subtitle | Short description of page or blog post that goes under the title |
| tags | List of tags to categorize the post. Separate the tags with commas and place them inside square brackets. Example: [personal, self help, finance] |
| bigimg | Include a large full-width image at the top of the page. You can either give the path to a single image, or provide a list of images to cycle through (see my personal website as an example). |
| comments | If you want do add comments to a specific page, use comments: true. Comments are automatically enabled on blog posts; to turn comments off for a specific post, use comments: false. Comments only work if you enable at least one provider(Facebook, disqus, staticman) in _config.yml file. |
| show-avatar | If you have an avatar configured in the _config.yml but you want to turn it off on a specific page, use show-avatar: false. If you want to turn it off by default, locate the line show-avatar: true in the file _config.yml and change the true to false; then you can selectively turn it on in specific pages using show-avatar: true. |
| image | If you want to add a personalized image to your blog post that will show up next to the post's excerpt and on the post itself, use image: /path/to/img. |
| readtime | If you want to show how many minutes it will take to read a post in the header, add readtime: true. |
| share-img | If you want to specify an image to use when sharing the page on Facebook or Twitter, then provide the image's full URL here. |
| social-share | If you don't want to show buttons to share a blog post on social media, use social-share: false (this feature is turned on by default). |
| use-site-title | If you want to use the site title rather than page title as HTML document title (ie. browser tab title), use use-site-title: true. When set, the document title will take the format Site Title - Site Description (eg. My website - A virtual proof that name is awesome!). By default, it will use Page Title if it exists, or Site Title otherwise. |
| language | HTML language code to be set on <html> element (see W3Schools website for more info on this topic). Language can also be set site-wide in _config.yml. |
| layout | What type of page this is (default is post for blog posts and page for other pages. You can use minimal if you don't want a header and footer). The index.html file should use the home layout to show all the blog posts. |
| gh-repo | If you want to show GitHub buttons at the top of a post, this sets the GitHub repo name (eg. daattali/beautiful-jekyll). You must also use the gh-badge parameter to specify what buttons to show. |
| gh-badge | Select which GitHub buttons to display. Available options are: [star, watch, fork, follow]. You must also use the gh-repo parameter to specify the GitHub repo. |
| js | List of local JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. /assets/js/mypage.js) |
| ext-js | List of external JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. //cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.8.2/underscore-min.js). External JavaScript files that support Subresource Integrity (SRI) can be specified using the href and sri parameters eg.href: "//code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.min.js"sri: "sha256-hVVnYaiADRTO2PzUGmuLJr8BLUSjGIZsDYGmIJLv2b8=" |
| css | List of local CSS files to include in the page |
| ext-css | List of external CSS files to include in the page. External CSS files using SRI (see ext-js parameter) are also supported. |
| googlefonts | List of Google fonts to include in the page (eg. ["Monoton", "Lobster"]) |
Use remote-theme (advanced)
It is possible to use the remote_theme feature of GitHub pages. To do so, instead of forking this project:
- Follow all the steps in https://guides.github.com/features/pages/ EXCEPT the ones where you chose the theme.
- add
remote_theme: daattali/beautiful-jekyllto your_config.yml - add
paginate: 5(or any value you'd like) to your_config.yml. This is the only configuration value that is required. - Optionally, if you want to use Staticman, you may need copy
_data/ui-text.ymlinto your repo if you want to change the language.
Any folder or file that you don't include in your repository will be included by jekyll on build. If you want to replace a file (css for instance), you'll just need to place it with the exact same path in own jekyll repo (e.g. /assets/css/main.css)
Advanced features (including how to use a custom URL address for your site)
I wrote a blog post describing some more advanced features that I used in my website that are applicable to any Jekyll site. It describes how I used a custom URL for my site (deanattali.com instead of daattali.github.io), how to add a Google-powered search into your site, and provides a few more details about having an RSS feed.
Showcased users (success stories!)
Beautiful Jekyll has been used in over 500 websites in its first 6 months, and tens of thousands of times since its inception. Here is a sample of some websites that use Beautiful Jekyll.
Project/company websites
| Website | Description |
|---|---|
| repidemicsconsortium.org/ | R Epidemics Consortium |
| vaccineimpact.org | Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium |
| derekogle.com/fishR | Using R for Fisheries Analyses |
| bigdata.juju.solutions | Creating Big Data solutions Juju Solutions |
| joecks.github.io/clipboard-actions | Clipboard Actions - an Android app |
| deanattali.com/shinyjs | shinyjs - an R package |
| blabel.github.io | Library for canonicalising blank node labels in RDF graphs |
| reactionic.github.io | Create iOS and Android apps with React and Ionic |
| ja2-stracciatella.github.io | Jagged Alliance 2 Stracciatella |
| ddocent.com | RADSeq Bioinformatics and Beyond |
| guitarlessons.org | Free online guitar lessons for all |
| terremotocentroitalia.info | Information about the 2016 Italy earthquake |
Personal websites
| Website | Who | What |
|---|---|---|
| deanattali.com | Dean Attali | Creator of Beautiful Jekyll |
| ouzor.github.io | Juuso Parkkinen | Data scientist |
| derekogle.com | Derek Ogle | Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Natural Resources |
| melyanna.github.io | Melyanna | Shows off her nice art |
| chauff.github.io | Claudia Hauff | Professor at Delft University of Technology |
| kootenpv.github.io | Pascal van Kooten | Data analytics |
| sjackman.ca | Shaun Jackman | PhD candidate in bioinformatics |
| anudit.in | Anudit Verma | Engineering student |
| sharepointoscar.github.io | Oscar Medina | Independent Hacker |
| ocram85.com | Marco Blessing | A personal blog about PowerShell and automation |
| khanna.cc | Harry Khanna | Law and software |
Advanced: Local development using Docker
Beautiful Jekyll is meant to be so simple to use that you can do it all within the browser. However, if you'd like to develop locally on your own machine, that's possible too if you're comfortable with command line. Follow these simple steps set that up with Docker:
-
Make sure you have Docker installed.
-
Clone your repository locally.
git clone https://github.com/<your_username>/<your_username>.github.io.git -
Run the following shell commands to build the docker image and start the container for the first time:
cd <repository_folder> docker build -t beautiful-jekyll "$PWD" docker run -d -p 4000:4000 --name beautiful-jekyll -v "$PWD":/srv/jekyll beautiful-jekyll
Now that Docker is set up, you do not need to run the above steps again. You can now view your website at http://localhost:4000/. You can start the container again in the future with:
docker start beautiful-jekyll
And you can stop the server with:
docker stop beautiful-jekyll
Whenever you make any changes to _config.yml, you must stop and re-start the server for the new config settings to take effect.
Disclaimer: I personally am NOT using local development so I don't know much about running Jekyll locally. If you follow this route, please don't ask me questions because unfortunately I honestly won't be able to help!
FAQ and support
If you need any help, I suggest heading over to the Jekyll support forum.
Beautiful Jekyll is actively used by thousands of people with wildly varying degrees of competency, so it's impossible to answer all the questions that may arise. Below are answers to a few very common questions. Most questions that I get asked are not directly related to this theme, and instead are more general questions about Jekyll or web development. Many such questions can be answered by reading the Jekyll documentation or with Google.
What if I don't want the website to be https://<yourusername>.github.io?
Every GitHub user can have one repository (repository = project) named <yourusername>.github.io and the website for that repository will be https://<yourusername>.github.io.
If you want your project to be named something else, for example MyAwesomeProject, that's no problem! All you have to do is go to Settings at the top right corner of the page, and rename your repository to MyAwesomeProject (remember to click on the Rename button to confirm!). Then you need to scroll down to the GitHub Pages section and choose "master branch" as the source (not "master branch /docs folder"!).
How do I change the number of posts per page OR the colour of the navigation bar OR the image in the navigation bar OR ...?
Beautiful Jekyll is built to be very customizable, and as such, many questions about "how do I change ..." can be answered by looking at the _config.yml file. The configuration file has many adjustable parameters to customize your site.
How do I add a favicon to my site?
Easy! Just place a valid favicon.ico in the root directory of your project. And then wait! It can take a while to update.
How do I move the blog to another page instead of having it on the home page?
The default style of Beautiful Jekyll is to feature the blog feed on the front page. But for many sites that's not the ideal structure, and you may want to have a separate dedicated page for the blog posts. To have the blog hosted on a different URL (for example at <mysite.com>/blog), copy the index.html file into a folder with the same name as the desired page (for example, to blog/index.html), and in the _config.yml file you need to add a parameter paginate_path: "/<page name>/page:num/" (for example paginate_path: "/blog/page:num/").
What size do you recommend using for the bigimg photos?
Unfortunately, this is a no-answer! There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to this, because every person will view your site on a different browser with different dimensions. Some browsers will have very wide aspect ratio, some will be narrower, some will be vertical (such as phones), different phones have different screens, etc. The image will always be centered, so the only tip I can give is that you should make sure the important part of the image is in the middle so that it'll always show. Other than that, every browser will show a different clipping of the image.
How do I use MathJax equations in my posts?
MathJax can be easily integrated into your website with a one-line addition. You can see this discussion for more information.
Credits
This template was not made entirely from scratch. I would like to give special thanks to:
- Barry Clark and his project Jekyll Now, from whom I've taken several ideas and code snippets, as well as some documenation tips.
- Iron Summit Media and their project Bootstrap Clean Blog, from which I've used some design ideas and some of the templating code for posts and pagination.
I'd also like to thank Dr. Jekyll's Themes, Jekyll Themes, and another Jekyll Themes for featuring Beautiful Jekyll in their Jekyll theme directories.
Contributions
If you find anything wrong or would like to contribute in any way, feel free to create a pull request/open an issue/send me a message. Any comments are welcome!
Thank you to all contributors. Special thanks to @OCram85 and @abelcheung for contributing multiple times as well as helping with discussions.
If you do fork or clone this project to use as a template for your site, I would appreciate if you keep the link in the footer to this project. I've noticed that several people who forked this repo removed the attribution and I would prefer to get the recognition if you do use this :)
Known limitations
- If there are many navigation bar links and an avatar, some of the links may get partially hidden behind the avatar. I suggest either re-thinking the number of links, or not using an avatar.