Jekyll + PWA + IndieWeb

A simple Jekyll starter with PWA functionality baked in. This includes a manifest.json file and a sw.js file that caches an app shell. Basic support for IndieWeb Blogging is included, including an RSS feed. Webmention support is included as well but requires a few extra steps to set up.

This is a starter project for Jekyll powered sites.

The purpose of this project is to provide an easy way to get a site up and running without touching a code editor. This requires two main things: a GitHub account and Netlify. This project uses NetlifyCMS for updating files stored in GitHub.

Let’s assume you’ve already signed up for a GitHub account….

Deploy to Netlify

Netlify makes it very easy to create a new site from GitHub repo. So easy that all you have to do is press a button. Like the one below.

This will launch Netlify’s sign up flow. You can rename the repo (which will be pushed to your own GitHub account) and build the site.

Enable NetlifyCMS

The next step is to enable Netlify’s Identity service to allow NetlifyCMS to talk to your site’s GitHub repo. Click on the Identity link in Netlify’s top navigation and enable Netlify’s Identity service.

The NetlifyCMS in this project relies a git-gateway for magic. Under the Identity settings, select the Services option and click Enable Git Gateway. Once enabled you should be go to go.

You also have the option of using external providers for authentication. I’d recommend selecting GitHub as a provider. Doing so will let you sign in to the CMS with your GitHub credentials.

Log in to the CMS

When Netlify builds your site the first time it will create a URL for you. Visit that URL and append it with /admin/. That’s the address for the CMS.

Change the Settings

This project has several sections ready for customizing your site. I’ll fill this section out later. But you can change the title of the site, add social media accounts and change the CSS framework the site uses. Right now, the options are the default framework (which is purposefully sparse) or Bootstrap. Once you save the changes Netlify will rebuild your site.

You’re done

Nice.

Getting Started:

Fork this repo. If you're new to GitHub you can read about forking repos on GitHub's documentation.
Edit your Information. Edit the contents of the about.yml file in /_data/. This will enable IndieWeb publishing on your site. You can read more about it in context of the this repo here.
Create a Netlify account Why Netlify? It's really nice. And they have a boss CMS available. This means you don't have to mess with code if you don't feel like it. You can either sign in or create your account using your existing GitHub account. Create your account at Netlify Sign up
Create your new site Once you've signed up for Netlify, click the big New site from Git button.
1. Select the GitHub option on the following screen.
2. Select the repo you want to to deploy. Let's say you renamed this repo to chowder or something equally weird, click on that repo to select it for deployment.
3. On the next screen, you can safely ignore all the other options and just hit Depoy Site. Netlify will assign a subdomain for your site and publish it. You either leave it as is, pick a more suitable subdomain or check Netlify's docs for instructions on setting up a custom domain.

Next Steps

Using Netlify's CMS to write for your site Most of the configurations needed to use Netlify's CMS with your site are already included in this repo. However, some things most be handled through your Netlify account. Carefully follow the instructions for CMS authentication here: authentication for Netlify. Once you've followed the steps provided you should be able to access the CMS for your site at https://yourdomain.com/admin/

If things got weird or didn't work as expected please open an issue and I'll try to help.

Changing the CSS

There isn't a lot of style here. Barely any at all. If you want to change things around you can run your site locally and make the changes you feel like. The SCSS file for the home page is in src/sass/pages/home/home.scss and the SCSS file for posts pages is in src/sass/pages/posts/posts.scss.

What's Inside?

Critical CSS

This Jekyll starter uses Filement Group's LoadCSS to load the base CSS file after the inlined CSS has been parsed. The critical CSS is injected into generated pages on build. Pages will each have their own critical CSS files and posts have their own as well. These are inlined along with the core CSS file that containes basic default styles. The reference to critical CSS can found in _includes/standard/new-head.html.

  {% capture styles %}
    {% include critical/new-critical.css %}
  {% endcapture %}

  {% if page.layout == "posts" %}
  {% capture postsStyle %}
    {% include critical/posts.css %}
  {% endcapture %}
  {% endif %}

  {% if page.pagestyle %}
   {% capture critical %}
    {% include critical/{{ page.pagestyle }} %}
   {% endcapture %}
  {% endif %}

The CSS for critical styles can be written in Sass and compiled to the _includes/critical folder using Gulp. It is also possible to create a styles.css file in the _includes/critical folder. Critcal CSS is included in the generated page when the documents front matter with the name of the critical CSS file matches an existing CSS file in `_includes/critical/:

---
layout: standard
pagestyle: home.css
---

IndieWeb

This instance of Jekyll has support for the h-card microformat that is used by IndieWeb sites to identify content and authorship. You can read more about it on IndieWeb.org. Editing the contents in _data/about.yml will enable h-card microformats for IndieWeb publshing.

Note: The webmention entry in the about.yml file should match the domain if you set up an account on webmention.io.

The content of the file look like this:

me:
  name: Josh Vogt
  bio: >-
    This is a bio for use with microformats h-card. This helps other
    machines understand your content for IndieWeb publishing.
  webmention: pwa-jekyll.netlify.com
social:
  - name: twitter
    url: 'https://twitter.com/jshvgt'
    class: u-url;
  - name: github
    url: 'https://github.com/dumaurier'
    class: u-url;
  - name: email
    url: 'mailto:joshvogt@gmail.com'
    class: u-email
  - name: sms
    url: 'sms:+14169671111'
    class: u-tel
  - name: my site
    url: 'https://pwa-jekyll-starter.netlify.com/'
    class: u-url

Include your own details in this file. You don't need to include any social network information if you don't want to but you'll need at least one available if you want to be able to sign in to site using just you domain address. It's worth it.

Webmentions

Webmentions allow other content creators to respond to your posts. The inital implementation is very basic. To get started with webmentions, go to webmention.io and sign in with your domain (this is assuming you've already edited the contents in about.yml and published your site on Netlify).

The references required to use webmentions are already included in this starter project. However, you will need to add your domain name in the about.yml file under the webmention entry. When the site builds the endpoints for sending and receiving mentions will be updated with your information.

The posts layout includes a snippet of JavaScipt to fetch and render any webmentions after the static content has loaded. This layout also includes a simple form for visitors to manually send webmentions to your site.

Note: In order for a webmention to be successfully processed the submitted link must contain a link to the page accepting the mention.

Progressive Web App

The project includes a simple Service Worker to cache the application shell. To include additional resources to the App Shell they need to be added in the sw.js file. The service workers version will be updated each time Jekyll builds the site so the cache on the service worker will be automatically busted on each release.

If you don't want the service worker's cache busted remove this const cacheName = 'sw-{{ site.time | date: '%s'}}'; from the top of the service worker file.

var filesToCache = [
 '/manifest.json',
 '/static-assets/js/home.js',
 '/static-assets/css/new-base.css',
 '/static-assets/js/modernizr_grid.js',
 '/'
];

The service worker will also create a runtime cache when visitors to your site visit other pages on your site. Visited pages will also be available offline.

Note: When developing locally in Chrome the network tabbed should have Disable cache checked and in the Application tab the Service Worker section should have Update on Reload checked.

Another Note: The runtime caching aspect of the service worker will fully lose its mind when you're developing locally with BrowserSync running. Run bundle exec jekyll serve if you want to test the runtime caching without BrowserSync flipping its lid.

BrowserSync

Running the site using the default gulp task will use BrowserSync. It's a fair bit slower on Windows when compared to a Mac.

Application Requirements

Note: If you run the site through Netlify and use Netlify CMS you don't need a darn thing.

Ruby
Jekyll
Node.js
Gulp

Running Jekyll Manually

Clone this repo
Open a Terminal/CMD window in the destination folder and run bundle install
Open a Terminal/CMD window in the destination folder and run npm install
Type gulp to build the Jekyll site

Using Jekyll-Admin Extension

Info on the jekyll-admin extension is available here: https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin

Open a Terminal/CMD window and run bundle install. This will install the jeykll-admin extension
To run an instance of Jekyll with the Admin interface run gulp jekyll-build
To run browser-sync with or without the Admin interface run gulp in a separate Terminal/CMD window

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dumaurier/pwa_jekyll