Contributing to the REST cookbook

The REST cookbook website uses Jekyll, a simple yet powerfull blog engine that easily allows for creating simple websites like these.

Contributing to our site is simple:

  • Fork the website to your own github account.
  • Clone your repository onto your computer. Make sure you create a new branch, and not use the master branch.
  • Create a new page inside the /_posts/* directory. This HAS GOT TO BE IN THE FORMAT OF YEAR-MONTH-DAY-FILENAME.html!!!
  • Add & commit your changes, and push it to your repository.
  • Create a pull request and we will try and merge your recipe.

Creating a new page

As said, a page must be placed in the _post directory, and in the year-month-day-filename.html format. Otherwise it wont get picked up by the system. Every post should look somewhat like this:

---
layout: recipe
title: <Title>
category: <Category>
author: <your name>
author_email: <your email address>
---
<h2>Title</h2>

<p>Your recipe</p>

The author_email address is optional. Make sure the category name is one of the existing category names (case matters), otherwise your posting will be added inside a new topic. If you have troubles creating a new page, take a look at one of the existing pages, or ask us for help.

Regenerating a new site

There are two ways to display your new site:

Run as a standalone webserver:

  • Start jekyll in your repository root with: jekyll --server
  • Browse to http://:4000 to see your site

Run inside an existing webserver:

  • Make sure your use the _site directory as your document root

When you make changes, you need to regenerate your website. This can be done by running jekyll without any parameters. This regenerates the _site directory.