purelog

Purelog Theme for Jekyll

A responsive, well-designed template to help you get started on your next blog or website.
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Quick start — use Purelog as a theme gem

The Purelog theme is published on RubyGems and can be used in any Jekyll site.

1. Add to your Gemfile:

gem "purelog", "~> 0.1.0"

2. In your _config.yml:

theme: purelog
plugins:
  - jekyll-feed
  - jekyll-seo-tag
  - jekyll-paginate-v2
  - jekyll-sitemap

3. Install and run:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

See also:

• Changelog: docs/CHANGELOG.md
• Theme gem guide/playbook: docs/THEME_GEM_GUIDE.md

About The Project

Purelog is a responsive, sidebar theme for the popular JAMstack generator Jekyll that only uses the minimal Pure.css framework (hence the name!), while still following the best practices possible for accessibility and search-engine optimization.

I created this after finishing Watery (which this theme is built off of), as a way to add more functionality and design while still remaining as lightweight as possible.

This project is aimed towards those looking for an interesting theme for Jekyll that has features that aren't found commonly elsewhere, specifically having separate sections dedicated towards: blogging, note-taking, and daily journal entries.

Features

Here are a few interesting features of this Jekyll theme:

• A fully customizable and empty _BLANK_config.yml to make getting up-and-running easy.
• A speedy, on-site search function using Simply Jekyll Search.
• Custom collections for different types of material (note-taking, journal writing, etc.)
• An auto-generating archive page that displays all entries from all collections.
• Auto-generating tags and categories pages.
• Having a _pages collection for easier organization.
• An author bio at the end of each post. (Located in _includes/author.html)
• Full Rouge support for syntax highlighting. (Currently using base16.solarized.light)
• Auto-generated RSS feed, sitemap, accessibility features, and search-engine optimization.

Installation

Prerequisites

Jekyll requires the following:

• Ruby version 2.5.0 or higher
• RubyGems
• GCC and Make

See Requirements for guides and details.

Instructions

1. Install all prerequisites.
2. Install the jekyll and bundler gems.

gem install jekyll bundler

3. Clone this repository.

git clone https://github.com/brennanbrown/purelog.git

4. Change into your new directory.

cd purelog

5. Install gems from the Gemfile.

bundle install

6. Build the site and make it available on a local server.

bundle exec jekyll serve

7. Browse to http://localhost:4000

If you encounter any errors during this process, check that you have installed all the prerequisites in Requirements.

If you still have issues, see Troubleshooting.

Getting Started

Once you have Jekyll up-and-running, there are only a few steps needed to make this theme your own:

1. Fill out the _BLANK_config.yml configuration file and replace the current _config.yml
2. Remove the example_posts folder in _posts, _notes, _journals and start writing your own!
3. Modify or remove the pages in _pages to however you see fit.
4. (Optional) Modify or remove this README.md with information about your own project or blog.
5. (Optional) Modify the CSS files in the assets folder to customize the site.

Analytics (optional)

This theme supports Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

• Set google_analytics: G-XXXXXXXXXX in _config.yml (or only in production via a separate config).
• The snippet only loads in production builds.

Documentation

• Project overview: this README.md
• Changelog: docs/CHANGELOG.md
• Configuration: _config.yml and _BLANK_config.yml
• Layouts and includes: _layouts/ and _includes/
• Collections: docs/COLLECTIONS.md
• Deploying: docs/DEPLOYING.md
• Using as a theme (preview): docs/THEME.md

Roadmap

There are several features that I'm still planning to create and integrate. Completed items are checked:

• Create a Theme Gem
• Add easy and automatic button to Deploy to Netlify
• Add continuous integration (GitHub Actions) for build checks
• Add documentation for creating custom collections and auto-generated pages
• Add more example posts and articles

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the MIT License. You can use this project however you see fit without needing to give attribution.

See LICENSE for more information.

Resources

While creating this theme, I came across a lot of helpful and hard-to-find resources. If you'd like to dive deeper into Jekyll, check them out:

• Jumping Into Jekyll: https://dev.to/brennan/jumping-into-jekyll-4o9h
• Jekyll Cheatsheet: https://devhints.io/jekyll
• Course on Jekyll: https://learn-the-web.algonquindesign.ca/topics/jekyll/
• Jekyll for Designers: http://simpleprimate.com/jekyll-for-designers/index.html
• Dynamic Copyright on Jekyll: https://michaelsoolee.com/jekyll-copyright/
• Creating breadcrumbs in Jekyll: https://jekyllcodex.org/without-plugin/breadcrumbs/
• Display all items from ALL collections: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31171041/listing-all-collections-in-jekyll

Other Resources

• For markdown previews: https://jaspervdj.be/lorem-markdownum/
• Case Study on webfont performance: https://www.keycdn.com/blog/web-font-performance
• An extensive .gitignore: https://miguelmota.com/bytes/extensive-gitignore/

Credit

Pure.css was created by the Pure CSS group.

Simple Jekyll Search was created by Christian Fei.

Various notes and ideas were taken from Simply Jekyll by Raghuveer S..