WIP Basically Basic Jekyll Theme

Basically Basic is a Jekyll theme meant as a substitute for the default jekyll new theme — Minima. Conventions and features found in Minima are fully supported by Basically Basic, with a few enhancements here and there.

Table of Contents

Installation

1. Install the theme as a Ruby Gem by adding it to your Gemfile like so:

   gem "jekyll-theme-basically-basic", :git => "https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic.git"
   

2. Fetch and update your bundled gems by running the following Bundler command:

   bundle
   

3. Set the theme in your project’s Jekyll configuration, _config.yml:

   theme: jekyll-theme-basically-basic
   

Configuration

Configuration of site-wide elements (title, description, author, etc.) happens in your project’s _config.yml. See the example configuration for reference.

Skin

This theme comes in six different skins (color variations). To change skins edit your project’s _config.yml to one of the following:

theme_skin: default | theme_skin: night | theme_skin: plum |
theme_skin: sea | theme_skin: soft | theme_skin: steel |

Navigation

By default all internal pages with a title will be added to the “off-canvas” menu. For more granular control and sorting of these menu links:

1. Create a custom list to override the default setting by adding a navigation_pages array to your _config.yml file.

2. Add raw page paths in the order you’d like:

   navigation_pages:
     - about.md
     - cv.md
   

Each menu link’s title and URL will be populated based on their title and permalink respectively.

Pagination

Break up the main listing of posts into smaller lists and display them over multiple pages by enabling pagination.

1. Include the jekyll-paginate plugin in your Gemfile.

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem "jekyll-paginate"
   end
   

2. Add jekyll-paginate to gems array in your _config.yml file and the following pagination settings:

   paginate: 5  # amount of posts to show per page
   paginate_path: /page:num/
   

3. Create index.html (or rename index.md) in the root of your project and add layout: home paginate: true to its YAML Front Matter.

Comments (via Disqus)

Optionally, if you have a Disqus account, you can show a comments section below each post.

To enable Disqus comments, add your Disqus shortname to your project’s _config.yml file:

  disqus:
    shortname: my_disqus_shortname

Comments are enabled by default and will only appear in production when built with the following environment value: JEKYLL_ENV=production

If you don’t want to display comments for a particular post you can disable them by adding comments: false to that post’s YAML Front Matter.

Google Analytics

To enable Google Analytics, add your tracking ID to _config.yml like so:

  google_analytics: UA-NNNNNNNN-N

Similar to comments, the Google Analytics tracking script will only appear in production when using the following environment value: JEKYLL_ENV=production.

Layouts

This theme provides the following layouts, which you can use by setting the layout Front Matter on each page, like so:

---
layout: name
---

layout: default

layout: post

layout: page

layout: home

layout: about

layout: cv

Customization

The default structure, style, and scripts of this theme can be overridden and customized in the following two ways.

Overriding Includes and Layouts

Theme defaults can be overridden by placing a file with the same name into your project’s _includes or _layouts directory. For instance:

• To specify a custom style path or meta data to the _includes/head.html file, create an _includes directory in your project, copy _includes/head.html from Basically Basic’s gem folder to <your_project>/_includes and start editing that file.

ProTip: to locate the theme’s files on your computer run bundle show jekyll-theme-basically-basic. This returns the location of the gem-based theme files.

Customizing Sass (SCSS)

To override the default Sass (located in theme’s _sass directory), do one of the following:

1. Copy directly from the Basically Basic gem

• Go to your local Basically Basic gem installation directory (run bundle show jekyll-theme-basically-basic to get the path to it).
• Copy the contents of /assets/stylesheets/main.scss from there to <your_project>.
• Customize want you want inside <your_project>/assets/stylesheets/main.scss.

2. Copy from this repo.

• Copy the contents of assets/stylesheets/main.scss to <your_project>.
• Customize want you want inside <your_project/assets/stylesheets/main.scss.

Note: To make more extensive changes and customize the Sass partials bundled in the gem. You will need to copy the complete contents the _sass directory to <your_project> due to the way Jekyll currently reads those files.

To make basic tweaks to theme’s style Sass variables can be overridden by adding to <your_project>/assets/stylesheets/main.scss. For instance, to change the accent color used throughout the theme add:

$accent-color: red;

Before any @import lines.

Customizing JavaScript

To override the default JavaScript bundled in the theme, do one of the following:

1. Copy directly from the Basically Basic gem

• Go to your local Basically Basic gem installation directory (run bundle show jekyll-theme-basically-basic to get the path to it).
• Copy the contents of /assets/javascripts/main.js from there to <your_project>.
• Customize want you want inside <your_project>/assets/javascripts/main.js.

2. Copy from this repo.

• Copy the contents of assets/javascripts/main.js to <your_project>.
• Customize want you want inside <your_project>/assets/javascripts/main.js.

Customizing Sidebar Content

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Development

To set up your environment to develop this theme:

1. Clone this repo
2. cd into /example and run bundle install.

To test the theme the locally as you make changes to it:

1. cd into the root folder of the repo (e.g. jekyll-theme-basically-basic).
2. Run bundle exec rake preview and open your browser to http://localhost:4000/example/.

This starts a Jekyll server using the theme’s files and contents of the example/ directory. As modifications are made, refresh your browser to see any changes.

Contributing

Found a typo in the documentation? Interested in adding a feature or fixing a bug? Then by all means submit an issue or take a stab at submitting a pull request. If this is your first pull request, it may be helpful to read up on the GitHub Flow.

Pull Requests

When submitting a pull request:

1. Clone the repo.
2. Create a branch off of develop and give it a meaningful name (e.g. my-awesome-new-feature) and describe the feature or fix.
3. Open a pull request on GitHub.

Theme documentation and sample pages can be found in the /docs folder if you’d like to tackle any “low-hanging fruit” like fixing typos, bad grammar, etc.

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Credits

Creator

Michael Rose

• https://mademistakes.com
• https://twitter.com/mmistakes
• https://github.com/mmistakes

Icons + Demo Images:

• Simple Icons
• Noun Project
• Unsplash

Other:

• Jekyll
• Susy
• Breakpoint

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License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Michael Rose

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.