GitHub Jekyll Project

Jekyll is a static site generator originally focused on creating simple blogs from plain text files. It has developed into a fully featured generator used on all types of web projects from tiny to huge (browse the Showcase).

Gh-pages uses a builtin Jekyll build service to generate all static web content. The basic demos presented so far don’t actually use any Jekyll features. However, a full fledged Jekyll project can be created with just a few files in a repository.

Note: file names starting with an underscore _ are special files to Jekyll. Be sure to include them correctly!

Demo using the Minima theme:

1. Create a new repository:
   • Click the + sign in the upper right and select New repository.
   • Give the repository a nice name
   • Check the Initialize this repository with a README option
   • Click Add .gitignore, search for jekyll, and select it
   • Click the Create repository button.
2. Create a _config.yml file to setup your Jekyll project (check the example config for all the options):
   • Click the Create new file button on the repository page.
   • Name the file _config.yml.

   • Add the basic YAML fields required by Jekyll:

     # basic options
     title: Your awesome title
     author: GitHub User
     email: your-email@domain.com
     description: A wonderful site
     twitter_username: jekyllrb
     github_username:  jekyll
     
     # Build settings
     markdown: kramdown
     theme: minima
     

   Be careful with indentation, YAML likes exactly 2 spaces.

3. Create a about.md file for the About page.
   • From the repository’s main page, click the Create new file button.
   • Name the file about.md.

   • At the top of the file add YAML Front Matter. Add some content. For example:

     ---
     layout: page
     title: About
     ---
     
     This is an about page about this awesome site.
     Hope you love it!
     
     Reasons:
     - its great.
     - its a test.
     
     ## Other thoughts
     
     This is great.
     

   • Commit the changes.
4. Activate gh-pages:
   • Click on the repository’s Settings tab.
   • Scroll down to the GitHub Pages options.
   • Click Source, select Master branch, and click Save.
   • Wait for a minute for gh-pages to build. The live link will appear in the options.
5. Add a blog post:
   • From the repository’s main page, click the Create new file button.
   • Create a new directory by typing _posts/. The name field will update.
   • Name the file 2017-04-18-first-post.md (post filenames must start with a date, use - to replace spaces).

   • Add YAML Front Matter and some content, for example,

     ---
     layout: post
     title: A Great First Post
     ---
     
     This is it!
     What a wonderful post!
     

   • Commit the changes, wait a minute for gh-pages to rebuild the site.

Congrats!

You have a Jekyll blog!

Any markdown files added to the _post directory with the correct filename convention will become blog post on your site. Markdown files added to the root directory will be come pages and show up in the navigation.

Read the Minima documentation to learn about the customization options–or just look at how the repository is set up for an example. If you put any file in the same place as the theme’s structure, your version will replace it.

Thanks Octocat!

If you want to collaborate on the blog, add other GitHub users in the Settings tab. Look for Collaborators on the left side menu. You can keep track of the project using the Issues or Projects features. For information about using different themes, check the Reference page.