General notes and suggestions for customizing HPSTR.
Basic Setup for a new Jekyll site
- Install Bundler
and then install Jekyll and all dependencies1
gem install bundler
.1
bundle install
- Fork the HPSTR Jekyll Theme repo.
- Clone the repo you just forked and rename it.
- Edit
to personalize your site.1
_config.yml
- Check out the sample posts in
to see examples for pulling in large feature images, assigning categories and tags, and other YAML data.1
_posts
- Read the documentation below for further customization pointers and documentation.
Pro-tip: Delete the
branch after cloning and start fresh by branching off 1
gh-pages
. There is a bunch of garbage in 1
master
used for the theme’s demo site that I’m guessing you don’t want on your site.1
gh-pages
Setup for an Existing Jekyll site
- Clone the following folders:
,1
_includes
, ‘_sass’,1
_layouts
, and1
assets
.1
images
- Clone the following folders/files and personalize content as need:
,1
about/
,1
posts/
,1
tags/
. and ‘index.html’.1
feed.xml
- Set the following variables in your
file:1
config.yml
Running Jekyll
If
and 1
jekyll build
throw errors you may have to run Jekyll with 1
jekyll serve
instead.1
bundled exec
In some cases, running executables without bundle exec may work, if the executable happens to be installed in your system and does not pull in any gems that conflict with your bundle.
However, this is unreliable and is the source of considerable pain. Even if it looks like it works, it may not work in the future or on another machine.
Folder Structure
Customization
Most of the variables found here are used in the .html files found in
if you need to add or remove anything. A good place to start would be to add the 1
_includes
, 1
title
, and 1
description
for your site. Links are absolute and prefixed with 1
url
in the various 1
{{ site.url }}
and 1
_includes
, so remember to properly set 1
_layouts
1 to 1
url
when developing locally.1
http://localhost:4000
Disqus Comments
Create a Disqus account and change
in 1
disqus_shortname
to the Disqus shortname you just setup. By default comments appear on all post and pages if you assigned a shortname. To disable commenting on a post or page, add the following to its YAML Front Matter:1
_config.yml
Social Share Links
To enable Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ share links on a post or page, add the following to its front matter:
Owner/Author Information
Change your name, and avatar photo (200x200 pixels or larger), email, and social networking URLs. If you want to link to an external image on Gravatar or something similar you’ll need to edit the path in
since it assumes it is located in 1
head.html
.1
/images
Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
Your Google Analytics ID goes here along with meta tags for Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools site verification.
Navigation Links
To add additional links in the drop down menu edit
. Use the following format to set the URL and title for as many links as you’d like. External links will open in a new window.1
_data/navigation.yml
Adding New Content with Octopress
While completely optional, I’ve included Octopress and some starter templates to automate the creation of new posts and pages. To take advantage of it start by installing the Octopress gem if it isn’t already.
New Post
Default command
Default works great if you want all your posts in one directory, but if you’re like me and want to group them into subfolders like
, 1
/posts
, etc. Then this is the command for you. By specifying the DIR it will create a new post in that folder and populate the 1
/portfolio
YAML with the same value.1
categories:
New Page
To create a new page use the following command.
Jekyll _includes
For the most part you can leave these as is since the author/owner details are pulled from
. That said you’ll probably want to customize the copyright stuff in 1
_config.yml
to your liking.1
footer.html
Reading Time
On by default. To turn off remove
from 1
reading_time
words_per_minute1
_config.yml. Default words per minute is set at 200 and can changed by updating
_config.yml`.1
in
Feature Images
A good rule of thumb is to keep feature images nice and wide so you don’t push the body text too far down. An image cropped around around 1024 x 256 pixels will keep file size down with an acceptable resolution for most devices. If you want to serve these images responsively I’d suggest looking at the Jekyll Picture Tag2 plugin.
The two layouts make the assumption that the feature images live in the images folder. To add a feature image to a post or page just include the filename in the front matter like so.
If you want to apply attribution to a feature image use the following YAML front matter on posts or pages. Image credits appear directly below the feature image with a link back to the original source.
Post/Page Thumbnails for OG and Twitter Cards
Post and page thumbnails work the same way. These are used by Open Graph and Twitter Cards meta tags found in
. If you don’t assign a thumbnail the image you assigned to 1
head.html
in 1
site.owner.avatar
will be used.1
_config.yml
Here’s an example of what a tweet to your site could look like if you activate Twitter Cards and include all the metas in your post’s YAML.
Videos
Video embeds are responsive and scale with the width of the main content block with the help of FitVids.
Not sure if this only effects Kramdown or if it’s an issue with Markdown in general. But adding YouTube video embeds causes errors when building your Jekyll site. To fix add a space between the
tags and remove 1
<iframe>
. Example below:1
allowfullscreen
Twitter Cards
Twitter cards make it possible to attach images and post summaries to Tweets that link to your content. Summary Card meta tags have been added to
to support this, you just need to validate and apply your domain to turn it on.1
head.html
Link Post Type
Link blog like a champ by adding
to a post’s YAML front matter. Arrow glyph links to the post’s permalink and the the 1
link: http://url-you-want-linked
links to the source URL. Here’s an example of a link post if you need a visual.1
post-title
Further Customization
Jekyll 2.x added support for Sass files making it much easier to modify a theme’s fonts and colors. By editing values found in
you can fine tune the site’s colors and typography.1
_sass/variables.scss
For example if you wanted a red background instead of white you’d change
to 1
$bodycolor: #fff;
.1
$bodycolor: $cc0033;
To modify the site’s JavaScript files I setup a Grunt build script to lint/concatenate/minify all scripts into
. Install Node.js, then install Grunt, and then finally install the dependencies for the theme contained in 1
scripts.min.js
:1
package.json
From the theme’s root, use
concatenate JavaScript files, and optimize .jpg, .png, and .svg files in the 1
grunt
folder. You can also use 1
images/
in combination with 1
grunt dev
to watch for updates JS files that Grunt will then automatically re-build as you write your code which will in turn auto-generate your Jekyll site when developing locally.1
jekyll build --watch
Questions?
Having a problem getting something to work or want to know why I setup something in a certain way? Ping me on Twitter @mmistakes or file a GitHub Issue. And if you make something cool with this theme feel free to let me know.
License
This theme is free and open source software, distributed under the MIT License version 2 or later. So feel free to to modify this theme to suit your needs.
-
Used to generate absolute URLs in
, and for canonical URLs in1
feed.xml
. Don’t include a trailing1
head.html
in your base url ie: http://mademistakes.com. When developing locally I suggest using http://localhost:4000 or whatever localhost you’re using to properly load all theme stylesheets, scripts, and image assets. If you leave this variable blank all links will resolve correctly except those pointing to home. ↩1
/
-
If you’re using GitHub Pages to host your site be aware that plugins are disabled. So you’ll need to build your site locally and then manually deploy if you want to use this sweet plugin. ↩