arkadianriver.com

Until Aug 2023, this was the theme for my personal web site. It uses the awesome design of http://html5up.net/spectral by the talented @ajlkn.

I morphed that design into this Jekyll theme for blog and portfolio entries. Jekyll is a static site generator, which uses templates to generate all the publishable content as static HTML files (as opposed to something like WordPress, which has files that pull data from a database at runtime). This repo is the exact same code I use for my site (excluding my posts and some data files created from templates where noted).

• Features
• Authoring Guide

If you like it

You can clone or fork this repo as a theme for your own blog. Because it doesn't use any plugins, you can easily host it on GitHub Pages. Even so, I recommend cloning your fork locally to create and preview your posts, regardless of where you choose to publish.

With it downloaded and with Ruby, RubyGems, and Jekyll 3.1.2 or higher installed, you can use the post-creation script, preview how your site looks and functions, and properly view the theme's User Guide.

1. Personalize the information in the YAML files.

   File	Action
   _config.yml	Replace the values for each key with your info.
   _data/tokens.yml	Create this file, using _data/tokens-template.yml as an example.
   _data/authors.yml	Add author info for yourself as the first entry in the file.

2. Personalize the images with your own, and change the attribution for your new banner at the bottom of _data/credits.yml.

   Image	Description
   banner.jpg	The main large image on the front page
   pic01.jpg	The topics image
   pic02.jpg	The works image

3. From the repo's root directory, start Jekyll to preview as you write.

   bundle exec jekyll serve --future --drafts
   

4. Open a browser to http://localhost:4000 (or the port number that jekyll indicates to open).

5. Compose your first post!

   ruby compose.rb
   

   The User Guide describes some features that might be useful: http://localhost:4000/topics/user-guide/

6. Test and publish your site:

   If you're building your site on Windows (like me) you can use the site.bat file; otherwise, just use the Jekyll commands as indicated in the site command reference below.

   If you use WinSCP to sync with your remote site, you can use the publish option. To publish with WinSCP, set up a _site.env file as described in the comments of site.bat, being particularly careful to list your site remote path and excludes correctly because the script uses the syncronize -delete option to mirror the entire remote folder to the local one. Otherwise, see the various publishing options in Jekyll's documentation.

   site {dev|devnof|preview|prod|publish}
   
     dev     Runs Jekyll in development watch mode:
               jekyll serve --future --drafts
   
     devnof  Runs Jekyll in development watch mode without future posts:
               jekyll serve --drafts
   
     preview Runs Jekyll in production watch mode:
               jekyll serve
   
     prod    Builds production content without watch mode:
               jekyll build
   
     publish Uses WinSCP's synchronize feature to mirror to a remote site.
   

Theme note

This is a theme in the old sense of the word. This is not a newer gem-based theme (yet).

License

MIT