28 KiB
Basically Basic Jekyll Theme
Basically Basic is a Jekyll theme meant as a substitute for the default — Minima. Conventions and features found there are fully supported by Basically Basic, with a few enhancements thrown in for good measure:
- Clean responsive design with six customizable skins
- Curriculum Vitæ/Resume layout powered by JSON data
- About page layout
- Disqus Comments and Google Analytics support
- SEO best practices via Jekyll SEO Tag
Table of Contents
Installation
If you’re running Jekyll v3.3+ and self-hosting you can quickly install the theme as Ruby gem. If you’re hosting with GitHub Pages you’ll have to use the “repo fork” method or directly copy all of the theme files (see structure below) into your project.
Ruby Gem Method
Install the theme as a Ruby Gem by adding it to your
Gemfile
like so:gem "jekyll-theme-basically-basic"
Fetch and update your bundled gems by running the following Bundler command:
bundle
Set the
theme
in your project’s Jekyll configuration,_config.yml
:theme: jekyll-theme-basically-basic
GitHub Pages Compatible Method
Fork the Basically Basic repo, then rename it to USERNAME.github.io — replacing USERNAME with your GitHub username.
Note: Your Jekyll site should be viewable immediately at http://USERNAME.github.io. If it’s not, you can force a rebuild by configuring your site (see below for more details).
Replace the contents of Gemfile
found in the root of
your Jekyll site with the following:
source "https://rubygems.org" gem "github-pages", group: :jekyll_plugins
Then run bundle update
and verify that the GitHub Pages gem and its
dependencies install properly.
Remove the Unnecessary
If you forked or downloaded the
jekyll-theme-basically-basic
repo you can safely remove the
following files and folders:
.codeclimate.yml
.editorconfig
.gitattributes
.github
.scss-lint.yml
CHANGELOG.md
jekyll-theme-basically-basic.gemspec
LICENSE.md
Rakefile
README.md
screenshot.png
/docs
/example
Structure
Layouts, includes, Sass partials, and data files are all placed in
their default locations. Stylesheets and scripts in assets
,
and a few development related files in the project’s root directory.
Please note: If you installed Basically Basic via
the Ruby Gem method, theme files found in /_layouts
,
/_includes
, /_sass
, and /assets
will be missing. This is normal as they are bundled with the jekyll-theme-basically-basic
gem.
jekyll-theme-basically-basic ├── _data # data files | └── theme.yml # theme settings and custom text ├── _includes # theme includes and SVG icons ├── _layouts # theme layouts (see below for details) ├── _sass # Sass partials ├── assets | ├── javascripts | | └── main.js | └── stylesheets | └── main.scss ├── _config.yml # sample configuration └── index.md # sample home page (all posts/not paginated)
Starting Fresh
After creating a Gemfile
and installing the theme you’ll
need to add and edit the following files:
Note: Consult the pagination documentation below for instructions on how to enable it for the home page.
Starting from
jekyll new
Using the jekyll new
command will get you up and running
the quickest.
Edit _config.yml
and create _data/theme.yml
as instructed above and you’re good to go.
Configuration
Configuration of site-wide elements (lang
,
title
, description
, logo
,
author
, etc.) happens in your project’s
_config.yml
. See the example
configuration in this repo for additional reference.
Description | |
---|---|
lang |
Used to indicate the language of text (e.g., en-US, en-GB, fr) |
title |
Your site’s title (e.g., Dungan’s Awesome Site) |
description |
Short site description (e.g., A blog about grasshopper mash) |
url |
The full URL to your site (e.g., https://groverloaf.org) |
author |
Global author information (see below) |
logo |
Path to a site-wide logo ~100x100px (e.g., /assets/your-company-logo.png) |
twitter_username |
Site-wide Twitter username, used as a link in sidebar |
github_username |
Site-wide GitHub username, used as a link in sidebar |
For more configuration options be sure to consult the documentation for: jekyll-seo-tag, jekyll-feed, jekyll-paginate, and jekyll-sitemap.
Skin
This theme comes in six different skins (color variations). To change
skins add one of the following to your /_data/theme.yml
file:
skin: default |
skin: night |
skin: plum |
---|---|---|
skin: sea |
skin: soft |
skin: steel |
---|---|---|
Google Fonts
This theme allows you to easily use Google Fonts throughout the theme.
Simply add the following to your /_data/theme.yml
, replacing the
font name
and weights
accordingly.
google_fonts: - name: "Fira Sans" weights: "400,400i,600,600i" - name: "Fira Sans Condensed"
Text
To change text found throughout the theme add the following to your
/_data/theme.yml
file and
customize as necessary.
t: skip_links: "Skip links" skip_primary_nav: "Skip to primary navigation" skip_content: "Skip to content" skip_footer: "Skip to footer" menu: "Menu" home: "Home" newer: "Newer" older: "Older" email: "Email" subscribe: "Subscribe" read_more: "Read More" posts: "Posts" page: "Page" of: "of" min_read: "min read" present: "Present"
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:
Create a custom list to override the default setting by adding a
navigation_pages
array to your/_data/theme.yml
file.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.
Include the
jekyll-paginate
plugin in yourGemfile
.group :jekyll_plugins do gem "jekyll-paginate" end
Add
jekyll-paginate
togems
array in your_config.yml
file and the following pagination settings:paginate: 5 # amount of posts to show per page paginate_path: /page:num/
Create
index.html
(or renameindex.md
) in the root of your project and add the following front matter:layout: home paginate: true
Author
Author information is used as meta data for post “by lines” and
propagates the creator
field of Twitter summary cards with
the following front matter in _config.yml
:
author: name: John Doe twitter: johndoetwitter picture: /assets/images/johndoe.png
Site-wide author information can be overridden in a document’s front matter in the same way:
author: name: Jane Doe twitter: janedoetwitter picture: /assets/images/janedoe.png
Or by specifying a corresponding key in the document’s front matter,
that exists in site.data.authors
. E.g., you have the
following in the document’s front matter:
author: megaman
And you have the following in _data/authors.yml
:
megaman: name: Mega Man twitter: megamantwitter picture: /assets/images/megaman.png drlight: name: Dr. Light twitter: drlighttwitter picture: /assets/images/drlight.png
Currently author.picture
is only used in
layout: about
. Recommended size is 300 x 300
pixels.
Reading Time
To enable reading time counts add read_time: true
to a
post or page’s 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 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
This layout handles all of the basic page scaffolding placing the
page content between the masthead and footer elements. All other layouts
inherit this one and provide additional styling and features inside of
the {{ content }}
block.
layout: post
This layout accommodates the following front matter:
# optional alternate title to replace page.title at the top of the page alt_title: "Basically Basic" # optional sub-title below the page title sub_title: "The name says it all" # optional intro text below titles, Markdown allowed introduction: | Basically Basic is a Jekyll theme meant to be a substitute for the default --- [Minima](https://github.com/jekyll/minima). Conventions and features found in Minima are fully supported by **Basically Basic**. # optional call to action links actions: - label: "Learn More" icon: github # references name of svg icon, see full list below url: "http://url-goes-here.com" - label: "Download" icon: download # references name of svg icon, see full list below url: "http://url-goes-here.com" image: # URL to a hero image associated with the post (e.g., /assets/page-pic.jpg) # post specific author data if different from what is set in _config.yml author: name: John Doe twitter: johndoetwitter comments: false # disable comments on this post
layout: page
Visually this layout looks and acts the same as
layout: post
, with two minor differences.
- Author “by line” and publish date are omitted.
- Disqus comments are omitted.
layout: home
This layout accommodates the same front matter as
layout: page
, with the addition of the following:
paginate: true # enables pagination loop, see section above for additional setup
layout: about
This layout accommodates the same front matter as
layout: page
, with the addition of the following to display
an author picture:
author: name: John Doe picture: /assets/images/johndoe.png
Recommended picture
size is approximately
300 x 300
pixels. If author
object is not
explicitly set in the about page’s front matter the theme will default
to the value set in _config.yml
.
If blank there no image will appear.
layout: cv
This layout accommodates the same front matter as
layout: page
. It leverages a JSON-based file standard for
resume data to conveniently render a curriculum vitæ or resume
painlessly.
Simply use JSON Resume’s in-browser resume builder to
export a JSON file and save to your project as
_data/cv.json
.
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:
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 what you want inside
<your_project>/assets/stylesheets/main.scss
.
- Go to your local Basically Basic gem installation directory (run
Copy from this repo.
- Copy the contents of assets/stylesheets/main.scss to
<your_project>
. - Customize what you want inside
<your_project/assets/stylesheets/main.scss
.
- Copy the contents of assets/stylesheets/main.scss to
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:
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 what you want inside
<your_project>/assets/javascripts/main.js
.
- Go to your local Basically Basic gem installation directory (run
Copy from this repo.
- Copy the contents of assets/javascripts/main.js to
<your_project>
. - Customize what you want inside
<your_project>/assets/javascripts/main.js
.
- Copy the contents of assets/javascripts/main.js to
SVG Icons
The theme uses social network logos and other iconography saved as
SVGs for performance and flexibility. Said SVGs are located in the
_includes
directory and prefixed with icon-
.
Each icon has been sized and designed to fit a 16 x 16
viewbox and optimized with SVGO.
Icon | Filename |
---|---|
icon-arrow-left.svg | |
icon-arrow-right.svg | |
icon-bitbucket.svg | |
icon-calendar.svg | |
icon-codepen.svg | |
icon-download.svg | |
icon-dribbble.svg | |
icon-email.svg | |
icon-facebook.svg | |
icon-flickr.svg | |
icon-github.svg | |
icon-gitlab.svg | |
icon-googleplus.svg | |
icon-instagram.svg | |
icon-lastfm.svg | |
icon-linkedin.svg | |
icon-pdf.svg | |
icon-pinterest.svg | |
icon-rss.svg | |
icon-soundcloud.svg | |
icon-stackoverflow.svg | |
icon-stopwatch.svg | |
icon-tumblr.svg | |
icon-twitter.svg | |
icon-xing.svg | |
icon-youtube.svg |
Fill colors are defined in the
_sass/basically-basic/_icons.scss
partial and set with
.icon-name
where class name matches the corresponding
icon.
For example the Twitter icon is given a fill color of
#1da1f2
like so:
<span class="icon icon--twitter">{% include icon-twitter.svg %}</span>
Alongside the SVG assets, there are icon helper includes to aid in generating social network links.
Include Parameter | Description | Required |
---|---|---|
username |
Username on given social network | Required |
label |
Text used for hyperlink | Optional, defaults to username |
For example, the following icon-github.html
include:
{% include icon-github.html username=jekyll label='GitHub' %}
Will output the following HTML:
<a href="https://github.com/jekyll"> <span class="icon icon--github"><svg viewBox="0 0 16 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-miterlimit="1.414"><path d="M8 0C3.58 0 0 3.582 0 8c0 3.535 2.292 6.533 5.47 7.59.4.075.547-.172.547-.385 0-.19-.007-.693-.01-1.36-2.226.483-2.695-1.073-2.695-1.073-.364-.924-.89-1.17-.89-1.17-.725-.496.056-.486.056-.486.803.056 1.225.824 1.225.824.714 1.223 1.873.87 2.33.665.072-.517.278-.87.507-1.07-1.777-.2-3.644-.888-3.644-3.953 0-.873.31-1.587.823-2.147-.09-.202-.36-1.015.07-2.117 0 0 .67-.215 2.2.82.64-.178 1.32-.266 2-.27.68.004 1.36.092 2 .27 1.52-1.035 2.19-.82 2.19-.82.43 1.102.16 1.915.08 2.117.51.56.82 1.274.82 2.147 0 3.073-1.87 3.75-3.65 3.947.28.24.54.73.54 1.48 0 1.07-.01 1.93-.01 2.19 0 .21.14.46.55.38C13.71 14.53 16 11.53 16 8c0-4.418-3.582-8-8-8"></path></svg></span> <span class="label">GitHub</span> </a>
Customizing Sidebar Content
Development
To set up your environment to develop this theme:
- Clone this repo
cd
into/example
and runbundle install
.
To test the theme the locally as you make changes to it:
cd
into the root folder of the repo (e.g.jekyll-theme-basically-basic
).- Run
bundle exec rake preview
and open your browser tohttp://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:
- Clone the repo.
- Create a branch off of
master
and give it a meaningful name (e.g.my-awesome-new-feature
) and describe the feature or fix. - Open a pull request on GitHub.
Sample pages can be found in the /docs
and /example
folders if you’d like to
tackle any “low-hanging fruit” like fixing typos, bad grammar, etc.
Credits
Creator
Michael Rose
Icons + Demo Images:
Other:
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.