jekyllPlay
Experiments with a static website
I am looking for a template and style to support a large project that will have several parts including: hardware design and documentation, firmware, infrastructure software, and a blog (or perhaps multiple blogs) to keep track of what I've worked on. Feedback and comments may become part of the project- it would be great if I could interest others in the end product.
It needs to be simple for me to use so that I don't end up focusing on the style.
Themes I tried
After looking through the sample themes (see below) I selected
for further evaluation. I downloaded each of them and tried a sample deploy. Code Folio hasn't been updated in 2 years and is missing installation instructions, aside from using Prose.io. So I dropped it.
slim-pickens required a lot of extra ruby packages and the use of rake. It is focused on S3 and isn't really designed for simple deployment on GitHub. So I dropped it.
mdl-jekyll worked, but the color scheme is garish to my eyes. I tried the custom theme builder but couldn't come up with anything much better.
Reading the mdl-jekyll FAQ it appears that this is still fairly new. It replaces much of Bootstrap, but doesn't provide all the features. So I conclude that if I'm going to use a style that is this heavy, I may as well go with solid, which is Bootstrap.
Themes I considered
I used the Jekyll Themes list at GitHub as the starting point and selected the following for further consideration.
Incorporated
Pretty and eye-catching, but the top block is a sea of buttons. No clear flow to where to start. DISCARDED
Flex
Clean and simple. Perhaps too simple. It is not clear where I can hook in all the parts of a large project. DISCARDED
minimal mistakes
Caught my eye, but on closer look this is primarily a blogging theme. DISCARDED
solid
As it says, 'Eye-catching Bootstrap 3 Theme'. I do have some familiarity with Bootstrap, so it is a contender. Initially DISCARDED, but in the end this is my selected starting theme.
skinny bones
The use instructions appear to be good and there are lots of hooks for menus, tables of content, and sub-sections. Ultimately DISCARDED because of the edge-to-edge background image. Seems like a promotion for a project more than documentation.
slim pickens
Most of the navigation is in the menu bar. Responsive grid and navigation. Good integration with s3, but not as clear how to use it with GitHub.
Lots of great ideas and support for tasks- see the rakefile documentation.
Code Folio
Nice use of grid. Multiple themes. On big screens the information from several menu items is shown, on small screens only one category.
Blog entries seem to emphasize photography- at least there is photo associated with each example post. Could be good or bad: nice place to put a schematic, board layout, or other useful image, but could cause a large waste of time selecting images.
Disqus section for comments on each blog post.
The source has not been updated in 2 years and there are no installation instructions aside from using Prose.io
DISCARDED
mdl-jekyll
Material Design Lite, (MDL), is part of the Google /Web tools
Other Notes
While the files in {{{gh-pages}}} are processed by Jekyll, if there are no Jekyll directives, configurations, etc. they the files are served un-modified (AFAICT). That means that any static generator could be used and the results of the generation could be committed to the {{{gh-pages}}} branch at which point they will be served by GitHub.