github-pages-blog template

A template repository for GitHub Pages Blog base on the minima theme.

Minima is a one-size-fits-all Jekyll theme for writers. It's Jekyll's default (and first) theme. Minima Theme preview

Using the template repository

Click on the Use this template button on the top right corner of the repository.
Give your repository a name using the format: your-github-username.github.io and click on Create repository from template.
Your repository will be created and you will be redirected to it.
Edit the _config.yml file in your repository to personalize your blog's name, description, and other settings.
Create new posts in the '_posts' folder using Markdown.
Commit your changes.
Wait a minute or two and navigate to https://your-github-username.github.io to see your blog live.

Development

If you have a technical background and want to run the blog locally, follow these steps:

Clone your repository
Set up Ruby and Jekyll on your machine.
Install Ruby and Jekyll following the installation guide
Run bundle install at the root of the repository
Run bundle exec jekyll serve to start the development server
Open the local version of the blog on http://localhost:4000

Minima Theme At-A-Glance (From the original README.md)

Minima was scaffolded by the jekyll new-theme command and therefore has all the necessary files and directories to have a new Jekyll site up and running with zero-configuration.

Layouts

Refers to files within the _layouts directory, that define the markup for your theme.

default.html — The base layout that lays the foundation for subsequent layouts. The derived layouts inject their contents into this file at the line that says {{ content }} and are linked to this file via FrontMatter declaration layout: default.
home.html — The layout for your landing-page / home-page / index-page. [More Info.]
page.html — The layout for your documents that contain FrontMatter, but are not posts.
post.html — The layout for your posts.

Includes

Refers to snippets of code within the _includes directory that can be inserted in multiple layouts (and another include-file as well) within the same theme-gem.

disqus_comments.html — Code to markup disqus comment box.
footer.html — Defines the site's footer section.
google-analytics.html — Inserts Google Analytics module (active only in production environment).
head.html — Code-block that defines the <head></head> in default layout.
header.html — Defines the site's main header section. By default, pages with a defined title attribute will have links displayed here.

Sass

Refers to .scss files within the _sass directory that define the theme's styles.

minima.scss — The core file imported by preprocessed main.scss, it defines the variable defaults for the theme and also further imports sass partials to supplement itself.
minima/_base.scss — Resets and defines base styles for various HTML elements.
minima/_layout.scss — Defines the visual style for various layouts.
minima/_syntax-highlighting.scss — Defines the styles for syntax-highlighting.

Assets

Refers to various asset files within the assets directory. Contains the main.scss that imports sass files from within the _sass directory. This main.scss is what gets processed into the theme's main stylesheet main.css called by _layouts/default.html via _includes/head.html.

This directory can include sub-directories to manage assets of similar type, and will be copied over as is, to the final transformed site directory.

Plugins

Minima comes with jekyll-seo-tag plugin preinstalled to make sure your website gets the most useful meta tags. See usage to know how to set it up.

Usage

Home Layout

home.html is a flexible HTML layout for the site's landing-page / home-page / index-page.

Main Heading and Content-injection

From Minima v2.2 onwards, the home layout will inject all content from your index.md / index.html before the Posts heading. This will allow you to include non-posts related content to be published on the landing page under a dedicated heading. We recommended that you title this section with a Heading2 (##).

Usually the site.title itself would suffice as the implicit 'main-title' for a landing-page. But, if your landing-page would like a heading to be explicitly displayed, then simply define a title variable in the document's front matter and it will be rendered with an <h1> tag.

Post Listing

This section is optional from Minima v2.2 onwards.
It will be automatically included only when your site contains one or more valid posts or drafts (if the site is configured to show_drafts).

The title for this section is Posts by default and rendered with an <h2> tag. You can customize this heading by defining a list_title variable in the document's front matter.

Customization

To override the default structure and style of minima, simply create the concerned directory at the root of your site, copy the file you wish to customize to that directory, and then edit the file. e.g., to override the _includes/head.html file to specify a custom style path, create an _includes directory, copy _includes/head.html from minima gem folder to <yoursite>/_includes and start editing that file.

The site's default CSS has now moved to a new place within the gem itself, assets/main.scss. To override the default CSS, the file has to exist at your site source. Do either of the following:

Create a new instance of main.scss at site source.
- Create a new file main.scss at <your-site>/assets/
- Add the frontmatter dashes, and
- Add @import "minima";, to <your-site>/assets/main.scss
- Add your custom CSS.
Download the file from this repo
- Create a new file main.scss at <your-site>/assets/
- Copy the contents at assets/main.scss onto the main.scss you just created, and edit away!
Copy directly from Minima 2.0 gem
- Go to your local minima gem installation directory ( run bundle show minima to get the path to it ).
- Copy the assets/ folder from there into the root of <your-site>
- Change whatever values you want, inside <your-site>/assets/main.scss

Customize navigation links

This allows you to set which pages you want to appear in the navigation area and configure order of the links.

For instance, to only link to the about and the portfolio page, add the following to you _config.yml:

header_pages:
  - about.md
  - portfolio.md

Change default date format

You can change the default date format by specifying site.minima.date_format in _config.yml.

# Minima date format
# refer to http://shopify.github.io/liquid/filters/date/ if you want to customize this
minima:
  date_format: "%b %-d, %Y"

Enabling comments (via Disqus)

Optionally, if you have a Disqus account, you can tell Jekyll to use it to show a comments section below each post.

To enable it, add the following lines to your Jekyll site:

  disqus:
    shortname: my_disqus_shortname

You can find out more about Disqus' shortnames here.

Comments are enabled by default and will only appear in production, i.e., 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.

Social networks

You can add links to the accounts you have on other sites, with respective icon, by adding one or more of the following options in your config:

twitter_username: your_twitter_username
github_username:  your_github_username
dribbble_username: your_dribbble_username
facebook_username: your_facebook_username
flickr_username: your_flickr_username
instagram_username: your_instagram_username
linkedin_username: your_linkedin_username
pinterest_username: your_pinterest_username
youtube_username: your_youtube_username

Enabling Google Analytics

To enable Google Analytics, add the following lines to your Jekyll site:

  google_analytics: UA-NNNNNNNN-N

Google Analytics will only appear in production, i.e., JEKYLL_ENV=production

Enabling Excerpts on the Home Page

To display post-excerpts on the Home Page, simply add the following to your _config.yml:

show_excerpts: true

TheoOkafor/theookafor.github.io