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
• Site-wide search provided by Algolia or Lunr.
• Disqus Comments and Google Analytics support
• SEO best practices via Jekyll SEO Tag

Table of Contents

1. Installation
   1. Ruby Gem Method
   2. GitHub Pages Method
      1. Remove the Unnecessary
2. Upgrading
   1. Ruby Gem
   2. Remote Theme
   3. Use Git
      1. Pull Down Updates
   4. Update Files Manually
3. Structure
   1. Starting Fresh
   2. Starting from jekyll new
4. Configuration
   1. Skin
   2. Google Fonts
   3. Text
   4. Navigation
   5. Pagination
   6. Search
      1. Lunr (default)
      2. Algolia
   7. Author
   8. Reading Time
   9. Comments (via Disqus)
   10. Google Analytics
5. Layouts
   1. layout: default
   2. layout: post
   3. layout: page
   4. layout: home
   5. layout: about
   6. layout: cv
6. Customization
   1. Overriding Includes and Layouts
   2. Customizing Sass (SCSS)
   3. Customizing JavaScript
   4. SVG Icons
   5. Customizing Sidebar Content
7. Development
8. Contributing
   1. Pull Requests
9. Credits
10. License

Installation

If you’re running Jekyll v3.5+ and self-hosting you can quickly install the theme as a Ruby gem. If you’re hosting with GitHub Pages you can install as a remote theme or directly copy all of the theme files (see structure below) into your project.

Ruby Gem Method

1. Add this line to your Jekyll site’s Gemfile:

   gem "jekyll-theme-basically-basic"
   

2. Add this line to your Jekyll site’s _config.yml file:

   theme: jekyll-theme-basically-basic
   

3. Then run Bundler to install the theme gem and dependencies:

   bundle install
   

GitHub Pages Method

GitHub Pages has added full support for any GitHub-hosted theme.

1. Replace gem "jekyll" with:

   gem "github-pages", group: :jekyll_plugins
   

2. Run bundle update and verify that all gems install properly.

3. Add remote_theme: "mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic" to your _config.yml file. Remove any other theme: or remote_theme: entries.

---

Note: Your Jekyll site should be viewable immediately at http://USERNAME.github.io. If it’s not, you can force a rebuild by Customizing Your Site (see below for more details).

If you’re hosting several Jekyll based sites under the same GitHub username you will have to use Project Pages instead of User Pages. Essentially you rename the repo to something other than USERNAME.github.io and create a gh-pages branch off of master. For more details on how to set things up check GitHub’s documentation.

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

Upgrading

If you’re using the Ruby Gem or remote theme versions of Basically Basic, upgrading is fairly painless.

To check which version you are currently using, view the source of your built site and you should something similar to:

<!--
    Basically Basic Jekyll Theme 1.2.0
    Copyright 2017-2018 Michael Rose - mademistakes.com | @mmistakes
    Free for personal and commercial use under the MIT license
    https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-basically-theme/blob/master/LICENSE.md
-->

At the top of every .html file, /assets/css/main.css, and /assets/js/main.js.

Ruby Gem

Simply run bundle update if you’re using Bundler (have a Gemfile) or gem update jekyll-theme-basically-basic if you’re not.

Remote Theme

When hosting with GitHub Pages you’ll need to push up a commit to force a rebuild with the latest theme release.

An empty commit will get the job done too if you don’t have anything to push at the moment:

git commit --allow-empty -m "Force rebuild of site"

Use Git

If you want to get the most out of the Jekyll + GitHub Pages workflow, then you’ll need to utilize Git. To pull down theme updates you must first ensure there’s an upstream remote. If you forked the theme’s repo then you’re likely good to go.

To double check, run git remote -v and verify that you can fetch from origin https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic.git.

To add it you can do the following:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic.git

Pull Down Updates

Now you can pull any commits made to theme’s master branch with:

git pull upstream master

Depending on the amount of customizations you’ve made after forking, there’s likely to be merge conflicts. Work through any conflicting files Git flags, staging the changes you wish to keep, and then commit them.

Update Files Manually

Another way of dealing with updates is downloading the theme — replacing your layouts, includes, and assets with the newer ones manually. To be sure that you don’t miss any changes it’s probably a good idea to review the theme’s commit history to see what’s changed since.

Here’s a quick checklist of the important folders/files you’ll want to be mindful of:

Name
_layouts	Replace all. Apply edits if you customized any layouts.
_includes	Replace all. Apply edits if you customized any includes.
assets	Replace all. Apply edits if you customized stylesheets or scripts.
_sass	Replace all. Apply edits if you customized Sass partials.
_data/theme.yml	Safe to keep. Verify that there were no major structural changes or additions.
_config.yml	Safe to keep. Verify that there were no major structural changes or additions.

---

Note: If you’re not seeing the latest version, be sure to flush browser and CDN caches. Depending on your hosting environment older versions of /assets/css/main.css, /assets/js/main.js, or *.html may be cached.

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:

• _config.yml
• /_data/theme.yml
• index.md

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:

1. Create a custom list to override the default setting by adding a navigation_pages array to your /_data/theme.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 the following front matter:

   layout: home
   paginate: true
   

Search

To enable site-wide search add search: true to your _config.yml.

Lunr (default)

The default search uses Lunr to build a search index of all your documents. This method is 100% compatible with sites hosted on GitHub Pages.

Note: Only the first 50 words of a post or page’s body content is added to the Lunr search index. Setting search_full_content to true in your _config.yml will override this and could impact page load performance.

Algolia

For faster and more relevant search (see demo):

1. Add the jekyll-algolia gem to your Gemfile, in the :jekyll_plugins section.

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem "jekyll-feed"
     gem "jekyll-seo-tag"
     gem "jekyll-sitemap"
     gem "jekyll-paginate"
     gem "jekyll-algolia"
   end
   

   Once this is done, download all dependencies by running bundle install.

2. Switch search providers from lunr to algolia in your _config.yml file:

   search_provider: algolia
   

3. Add the following Algolia credentials to your _config.yml file. If you don’t have an Algolia account, you can open a free Community plan. Once signed in, you can grab your credentials from your dashboard.

   algolia:
     application_id: # YOUR_APPLICATION_ID
     index_name: # YOUR_INDEX_NAME
     search_only_api_key: # YOUR_SEARCH_ONLY_API_KEY
     powered_by: # true (default), false
   

4. Once your credentials are setup, you can run the indexing with the following command:

   ALGOLIA_API_KEY=your_admin_api_key bundle exec jekyll algolia
   

   For Windows users you will have to use set to assigned the ALGOLIA_API_KEY environment variable.

   set ALGOLIA_API_KEY=your_admin_api_key
   bundle exec jekyll algolia
   

   Note that ALGOLIA_API_KEY should be set to your admin API key.

To use the Algolia search with GitHub Pages hosted sites follow this deployment guide. Or this guide for deploying on Netlify.

Note: The Jekyll Algolia plugin can be configured in several ways. Be sure to check out their full documentation on how to exclude files and other valuable settings.

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:

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 what 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 what 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 of 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 the following:

$accent-color: red;

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 what 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 what you want inside <your_project>/assets/javascripts/main.js.

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:

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 master 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.

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

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

Icons + Demo Images:

• Simple Icons
• Noun Project
• Unsplash

Other:

• Jekyll
• Susy
• Breakpoint

---

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2017-2018 Michael Rose and contributors

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.

Basically Basic incorporates icons from The Noun Project. Icons are distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States (CC BY 3.0 US).

Basically Basic incorporates photographs from Unsplash.

Basically Basic incorporates Susy, Copyright (c) 2017, Miriam Eric Suzanne. Susy is distributed under the terms of the BSD 3-clause “New” or “Revised” License.

Basically Basic incorporates Breakpoint. Breakpoint is distributed under the terms of the MIT/GPL Licenses.