So Simple Jekyll Libre Theme

This is a fork from the So Simple Theme that supports self-hosted analytics, supports comments through privacy-preserving Talkyard and removes almost all dependence on javascript for the site (except for analytics and comments).

So Simple is a simple Jekyll theme for your words and pictures. Built to provide:

• A variety of layouts with clean and readable typography.
• Microformats markup to make post content machine-readable and discoverable.
• Talkyard Comments (can also be self-hosted)
• Self-hosted Analytics support via Jekyll Analytics.
• SEO best practices via Jekyll SEO Tag.
• Options to customize the theme and make it your own.
• Almost no javascript (except for analytics and comments).

✨ See what's new in the CHANGELOG.

Additional sample posts can be view on the demo site. Source files for these (and the entire demo site) can be found in /docs folder.

1. Installation
   1. Ruby Gem Method
   2. GitHub Pages Method
      1. Remove the Unnecessary
2. Upgrading
   1. Ruby Gem
   2. Remote Theme
   3. Use Git
   4. Update Files Manually
3. Structure
   1. Starting Fresh
   2. Starting from jekyll new
4. Configuring
   1. Site Skin
   2. Site Locale
   3. Site URL
   4. Site Base URL
   5. Date Format
   6. Reading Time
   7. Mathematics
   8. Pagination
   9. Search
   10. Taxonomy Pages
   11. Comments (via Talkyard)
   12. Analytics
   13. Other
5. Layouts
   1. layout: default
   2. layout: post
   3. layout: page
   4. layout: home
   5. layout: posts
   6. layout: categories
   7. layout: tags
   8. layout: collection
   9. layout: category
   10. layout: tag
   11. layout: search
6. Images
7. Theme Text
8. Navigation
9. Author
10. Footer
    1. Footer Links
    2. Copyright Text
11. Helpers
    1. Responsive Embed
    2. Table of Contents
12. Customization
    1. Overriding Includes and Layouts
    2. Customizing Sass (SCSS)
    3. Customizing JavaScript
13. Font Awesome Icons
14. Development
    1. JavaScript Build Script
15. Contributing
16. Credits
17. License

If you're running Jekyll v3.5+ and self-hosting you can quickly install the theme as a Ruby gem. If you're hosting with GitHub Pages you can install as a remote theme or directly copy all of the theme files (see structure below) into your project.

1. Add this line to your Jekyll site's Gemfile (or create one):

   gem "jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre"

2. Add this line to your Jekyll site's _config.yml file:

   theme: jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre

3. Then run Bundler to install the theme gem and dependencies:

   bundle install
   

GitHub Pages has added full support for any GitHub-hosted theme.

1. Replace gem "jekyll" with:

   gem "github-pages", group: :jekyll_plugins

2. Run bundle update and verify that all gems install properly.

3. Add remote_theme: "anandtrex/so-simple-libre-theme@4.0.0" to your _config.yml file. Remove any other theme: or remote_theme: entries.

Note: Your Jekyll site should be viewable immediately at http://USERNAME.github.io. If it's not, you can force a rebuild by pushing empty commits to GitHub (see below for more details).

If you're hosting several Jekyll based sites under the same GitHub username you will have to use Project Pages instead of User Pages. Essentially you rename the repo to something other than USERNAME.github.io and create a gh-pages branch off of master. For more details on how this works, check GitHub's documentation.

If you forked or downloaded the so-simple-libre-theme repo you can safely remove the following files and folders:

• .github
• docs
• example
• .editorconfig
• .gitattributes
• CHANGELOG.md
• Gemfile
• jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre.gemspec
• Rakefile
• README.md
• screenshot.png

If you're using the Ruby Gem or remote theme versions of So Simple, upgrading is fairly painless.

Simply run bundle update if you're using Bundler (have a Gemfile) or gem update jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre if you're not.

Verify you have the latest version assigned in _config.yml

remote_theme: "anandtrex/so-simple-libre-theme@4.0.0"

Note: If @x.x.x is omitted the theme's current master branch will be used. It is advised to "lock" remote_theme at a specific version to avoid introducing breaking changes to your site.

The next step requires rebuilding your GitHub Pages site so it can pull down the latest theme updates. This can be achieved by pushing up a commit to your GitHub repo.

An empty commit will get the job done too if you don't have anything to push at the moment:

git commit --allow-empty -m "Force rebuild of site"

If you want to get the most out of the Jekyll + GitHub Pages workflow, then you'll need to utilize Git. To pull down theme updates manually you must first ensure there's an upstream remote. If you forked the theme's repo then you're likely good to go.

To double check, run git remote -v and verify that you can fetch from origin https://github.com/anandtrex/so-simple-libre-theme.git.

To add it you can do the following:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/anandtrex/so-simple-libre-theme.git

Now you can pull any commits made to theme's master branch with:

git pull upstream master

Depending on the amount of customizations you've made after forking, there's likely to be merge conflicts. Work through any conflicting files Git flags, staging the changes you wish to keep, and then commit them.

Another way of dealing with updates is downloading the theme --- replacing your layouts, includes, and assets with the newer ones manually. To be sure that you don't miss any changes review the theme's commit history to see what has changed.

Here's a quick checklist of the important folders/files you'll want to be mindful of:

Note: If you're not seeing the latest version, be sure to flush browser and CDN caches. Depending on your hosting environment older versions of /assets/css/main.css, or *.html files may be cached.

Layouts, includes, Sass partials, and data files are all placed in their default locations. Stylesheets and scripts can be found in assets, and a few development related files in the project's root directory.

Please note: If you installed So Simple via the Ruby Gem or remote theme methods, theme files found in /_layouts, /_includes, /_sass, and /assets will be missing from your project. This is normal as they are bundled with the jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre gem.

├── _data               # data files
|  ├── navigation.yml   # navigation bar links
|  └── text.yml         # theme text
├── _includes           # theme includes
├── _layouts            # theme layouts (see below for usage)
├── _sass               # Sass partials
├── assets
|  ├── css
|  |  └── main.scss
├── _config.yml         # sample configuration
└── index.md            # sample home page (recent posts/not paginated)

After creating a Gemfile and installing the theme you'll need to add and edit the following files:

• _config.yml
• /_data/navigation.yml
• /_data/text.yml
• index.md

Note: Consult the pagination documentation below for instructions on how to enable it on the home page.

Using the jekyll new command will get you up and running the quickest.

Edit your Gemfile and _config.yml files following the installation guide above and configuration guide below, then create _data/text.yml as instructed earlier.

Configuration of site-wide elements (locale, title, description, url, logo, author, etc.) happens in your project's _config.yml. See the example configuration in this repo for additional reference.

Three skins (default, light, and dark) are available to change the color palette of the theme.

default.css	light.css	dark.css

skin: "/assets/css/skins/default.css"
skin: "/assets/css/skins/light.css"
skin: "/assets/css/skins/dark.css"

To use a custom skin other than the ones provided:

1. Copy and rename /assets/css/skins/default.scss to your local repo.
2. Override and customize Sass variables as you see fit.
3. Update the skin path in _config.yml to reference this new skin .css file.

site.locale is used to declare the primary language for each web page within the site.

Example: locale: "en-US" sets the lang attribute for the site to the United States flavor of English, while en-GB would be for the United Kingdom style of English. Country codes are optional and the shorter variation locale: "en" is also acceptable. To find your language and country codes check this reference table.

Properly setting the locale is important for associating localized text found in the text data file.

Note: The theme defaults to text in English (en, en-US, en-GB). If you change locale in _config.yml to something else be sure to add the corresponding locale key and translated text to _data/text.yml.

The base hostname and protocol for your site. If you're hosting with GitHub Pages this will be something like url: "https://anandtrex.github.io" or url: "https://your-site.com" if you have a custom domain name.

GitHub Pages now forces https:// for new sites, so be mindful of that when setting your URL to avoid mixed-content warnings.

Note: Jekyll overrides the value of url with http://localhost:4000 when running jekyll serve locally in development. If you want to avoid this behavior set JEKYLL_ENV=production to force the environment to production.

This option causes all kinds of confusion in the Jekyll community. If you're not hosting your site as a GitHub Project Page or in a subfolder (e.g., /blog), then don't mess with it.

In the case of the So Simple Libre demo site it's hosted on GitHub at https://anandtrex.github.io/so-simple-libre-theme. To correctly set this base path I'd use url: "https://anandtrex.github.io" and baseurl: "/so-simple-libre-theme".

For more information on how to properly use site.url and site.baseurl as intended by the Jekyll maintainers, check Parker Moore's post on the subject.

Note: When using baseurl remember to include it as part of your link and asset paths in your content. Values of url: and baseurl: "/blog" would make your local site visible at http://localhost:4000/blog and not http://localhost:4000. You can either prepend all your asset and internal link paths with {{ site.baseurl }} or use Jekyll's relative_url.

To use the example values above the following image path of {{ '/images/my-image.jpg' | relative_url }} would output correctly as http://localhost:4000/blog/images/my-image.jpg.

Without the relative_url filter that asset path would be missing /blog and you'd have a broken image on your page.

You can change the default date format by specifying date_format in _config.yml. It accepts any of the standard Liquid date formats.

For example the default value of "%B %-d, %Y" could be changed like so:

date_format: "%Y-%m-%d"

Enable estimated reading time snippets site-wide with read_time: true. 200 has been set as the default words per minute value — which can be changed via words_per_minute in your _config.yml file.

read_time: true
words_per_minute: 200

Enable MathJax (a JavaScript display engine for mathematics) on a per-post basis.

Add the following code to the bottom of your post markdown file.

<script src="https://polyfill.io/v3/polyfill.min.js?features=es6"></script>
<script id="MathJax-script" async src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mathjax@3/es5/tex-mml-chtml.js"></script>

$serif-font-family: "Lora", serif;
$sans-serif-font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif;
$monospace-font-family: Menlo, Consolas, Monaco, "Courier New", Courier,
  monospace;

$base-font-family: $sans-serif-font-family;
$headline-font-family: $sans-serif-font-family;
$title-font-family: $serif-font-family;
$description-font-family: $serif-font-family;
$meta-font-family: $serif-font-family;

See stylesheet documentation below for more information on overriding the theme's default variables.

Break up the main listing of posts on the home page across multiple pages by enabling pagination.

1. Include the jekyll-paginate-v2 plugin in your Gemfile.

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem "jekyll-paginate-v2"
   end

2. Add jekyll-paginate-v2 to the plugins array (previously gems) in your _config.yml file and the following pagination settings:

   # Pagination Settings
   pagination:
     enabled: true
     per_page: 3
     offset: 2
     permalink: '/page/:num/'
     title: ':title - page :num of :max'
     limit: 0
     sort_field: 'date'
     sort_reverse: true

3. Create index.html (or rename index.md) in the root of your project and add the following front matter:

   layout: home
    pagination: 
      enabled: true

By default, category and tags added to a post are not linked to taxonomy archive pages. To enable this behavior and link to pages with posts grouped by category or tag, add the following:

category_archive_path: "/categories/#"
tag_archive_path: "/tags/#"

These paths should mimic the permalinks used for your categories and tags archive pages. The # at the end is necessary to target the correct taxonomy section on the pages.

For example if you were to create categories.md with the following front matter:

title: Categories Archive
layout: categories
permalink: /foo/

You'd need to change category_archive_path to "/foo/# for category links to function properly.

Note: You can create dedicated category and tag pages manually with layout: category and layout: tag. Or use plugins like jekyll-archives or jekyll-paginate-v2 to generate them automatically.

If you have a Talkyard account, you can show a comments section below each post.

To enable Talkyard comments, add your Talkyard server URL to your project's _config.yml file:

talkyard_server_url: https://site-name.talkyard.net
talkyard_script_url: https://c1.ty-cdn.net/-/talkyard-comments.min.js

If you don't want to display comments for a particular post you can disable them by adding comments: false to that post's front matter.

Enable analytics support using jekyll-analytics. See example in _config.yml.

The analytics tracking script will only appear in production when using the following environment value: JEKYLL_ENV=production.

For more configuration options be sure to consult the documentation for: jekyll-seo-tag, jekyll-feed, jekyll-paginate-v2, and jekyll-sitemap.

This theme provides the following layouts, which you can use by setting the layout front matter on each page, like so:

---
layout: name
---

This layout handles all of the basic page scaffolding placing the page content between the masthead and footer elements. All other layouts inherit this one and provide additional styling and features inside of the {{ content }} block.

This layout accommodates the following front matter:

Post image example:

image:
  path: /images/post-image-lg.jpg
  thumbnail: /images/post-image-th.jpg
  caption: "Photo credit [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)"

Note: image.feature front matter has been deprecated, to fully support jekyll-seo-tag. If you are not using thumbnail or caption the post image can be assigned more concisely as image: /images/your-post-image.jpg.

Post author example:

# post specific author data if different from what is set in _config.yml
author:
  name: John Doe
  picture: /images/john-doe.jpg
  twitter: johndoe

Note: Author information can centralized in _data/authors.yml by doing following in the document's front matter:

author: johndoe

With the corresponding author key in _data/authors.yml:

johndoe:
  name: John Doe
  picture: /images/john-doe.jpg
  twitter: johndoe

Note: author.picture recommended size is 150 x 150 pixels.

To define what links appear in the author sidebar use the authors.links key in either _config.yml or /_data/authors.yml.

Example:

author:
  links:
    - title: Twitter
      url: https://twitter.com/username
      icon: fab fa-twitter-square
    - title: Instagram
      url: https://instagram.com/username
      icon: fab fa-instagram
    - title: GitHub
      url: https://github.com/username
      icon: fab fa-github-square

Note: To disable author links completely use use:

author:
  links: false

Visually this layout looks and acts similar layout: post, with the following differences.

• Author sidebar and page meta (published date, categories, and tags) are ommitted.
• Page is less wide due to omitted sidebar.
• Disqus comments are omitted.
• Next/Previous post navigation links omitted.

The page layout forms the base for several other layouts like home, posts, categories, tags, collection, category, tag, and search.

This layout accommodates the same front matter as layout: page, with the addition of the following:

paginate: true  # enables pagination loop, see section above for additional setup
entries_layout: # list (default), grid

When pagination is not enabled the page defaults to showing the latest 10 posts. To change the amount of posts shown, assign a limit value by adding the following to the page's front matter.

posts_limit: 5

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

This layout displays all posts grouped by the year they were published. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page.

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

This layout displays all posts grouped category. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page.

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

This layout displays all posts grouped by tag. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page.

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

This layout displays all documents grouped by a specific collection. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page with the addition of the following:

collection: # collection name
entries_layout: # list (default), grid
show_excerpts: # true (default), false
sort_by: # date (default) title
sort_order: # forward (default), reverse

To create a page showing all documents in the recipes collection you'd create recipes.md in the root of your project and add this front matter:

title: Recipes
layout: collection
permalink: /recipes/
collection: recipes

By default, documents are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter. If you want to sort the collection by title add sort_by: title. If you want reverse sorting, add sort_order: reverse. If you are simply looking for a list that shows recipe titles (no excerpts), add show_excerpts: false.

This layout displays all posts grouped by a specific category. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page with the addition of the following:

taxonomy: # category name
entries_layout: # list (default), grid

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

To create a page showing all posts assigned to the category foo you'd create foo.md in the root of your project and add this front matter:

title: Foo
layout: category
permalink: /categories/foo/
taxonomy: foo

This layout displays all posts grouped by a specific tag. It accommodates the same front matter as layout: page with the addition of the following:

taxonomy: # tag name
entries_layout: # list (default), grid

By default, posts are shown in a list view. To change to a grid view add entries_layout: grid to the page's front matter.

To create a page showing all posts assigned to the tag foo bar you'd create foo-bar.md in the root of your project and add this front matter:

title: Foo Bar
layout: tag
permalink: /tags/foo-bar/
taxonomy: foo bar

This layout displays a search form and displays related pages based on the query.

Page content index: title, excerpt, content (when enabled), categories, tags, and url.

If you would like to exclude specific pages/posts from the search index set the search flag to false in their front matter.

search: false

To index the full content of your documents set search_full_content to true in _config.yml:

search_full_content: true

Note: Large amounts of posts will increase the size of the search index, impacting page load performance. Setting search_full_content to false (the default) restricts indexing to the first 50 words of body content.

Suggested image sizes in pixels are as follows:

To change text found throughout the theme, copy the following /_data/text.yml file and customize as necessary.

When adding new texts be sure the keys match these language/country codes, that may be used for site.locale.

To define what pages are linked in the top navigation:

1. Create a /_data/navigation.yml file.

2. Add pages in the order you'd like them to appear:

   - title: Posts
     url: /posts/
   - title: Categories
     url: /categories/
   - title: External Page
     url: https://whatever-site.com/page.html
   - title: Search
     url: /search/

Note: Long titles or many links may cause the navigation bar to break into multiple lines, especially on smaller screens. Keep this in mind as you develop your site's primary navigation.

Author information is used as meta data for post "by lines" and propagates the creator field of Twitter summary cards with the following front matter in _config.yml:

author:
  name: John Doe
  twitter: johndoetwitter
  picture: /images/johndoe.png

Site-wide author information can be overridden in a document's front matter in the same way:

author:
  name: Jane Doe
  twitter: janedoetwitter
  picture: /images/janedoe.png

Or by specifying a corresponding key in the document's front matter, that exists in site.data.authors. E.g., you have the following in the document's front matter:

author: megaman

And you have the following in _data/authors.yml:

megaman:
  name: Mega Man
  twitter: megamantwitter
  picture: /images/megaman.png

drlight:
  name: Dr. Light
  twitter: drlighttwitter
  picture: /images/drlight.png

Currently author.picture is only used in layout: post. Recommended size is 150 x 150 pixels.

The footer links and copyright text can both be customized.

Footer links are set in _config.yml under the footer_links key.

Examples:

footer_links:
  - title: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/username
    icon: fab fa-twitter-square
  - title: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/mmistakes
    icon: fab fa-github-square
  - title: Feed
    url: atom.xml
    icon: fas fa-rss-square

Note: To disable footer links completely use footer_links: false.

By default the copyright inserts the current year, site.title, and the words "Powered by Jekyll & So Simple." To change this add copyright to your _config.yml like so (Markdown is allowed):

copyright: "This site is made with <3 by *me, myself, and I*."

You can think of these Jekyll helpers as shortcodes. Since GitHub Pages doesn't allow most plugins --- custom tags are out. Instead the theme leverages includes to do something similar.

Embed a video from YouTube/Vimeo or any other iframe content that responsively sizes to fit the width of its parent.

Example:

{% include responsive-embed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVofD2A9t8" ratio="16:9" %}

To include an auto-generated table of contents for posts and pages, add the following helper where you'd like it to appear.

{% include toc %}

When installing as a Ruby gem or remote theme the core theme files (_layouts, _includes, _sass, assets, etc.) will be absent from your project.

The default structure, style, and scripts of this theme can be overridden and customized in the following two ways:

Theme files can be overridden by placing a file with the same name into your project's _includes or _layouts directory. For instance:

• To add another social sharing button to _includes/social-share.html, create an _includes directory in your project, copy _includes/social-share.html from So Simple's gem folder to <your_project>/_includes and edit that file.

ProTip: to locate the theme's files on your computer run bundle show jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre. This returns the location of the gem-based theme files.

The theme comes with two files to help inject custom markup and content into predefined locations.

To override the default Sass (located in theme's _sass directory), do one of the following:

1. Copy directly from the So Simple gem

   • Go to your local So Simple gem installation directory (run bundle show jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre to get the path to it).
   • Copy the contents of /assets/css/main.scss from there to <your_project>.
   • Customize what you want inside <your_project>/assets/css/main.scss.

2. Copy from this repo.

   • Copy the contents of assets/css/main.scss to <your_project>.
   • Customize what you want inside <your_project/assets/css/main.scss.

Note: To customize the actual Sass partials bundled in the gem, you will need to copy the complete contents of the _sass directory to <your_project>. Due to the way Jekyll currently imports these files it's all or nothing. Overriding a single Sass partial (or two) won't work like _includes and _layouts.

To make basic tweaks to theme's style, Sass variables can be overridden by adding to <your_project>/assets/css/main.scss. For instance, to change the accent color used throughout the theme add the following before all @import lines:

$accent-color: tomato;

The theme utilizes the Font Awesome webfonts with CSS version for iconography. Prominent locations these icons appear are in the author sidebar and footer links.

To set up your environment to develop this theme:

1. Clone this repo
2. cd into /example and run bundle install.

To test the theme locally as you make changes to it:

1. cd into the root folder of the repo (e.g. jekyll-theme-so-simple-libre).
2. Run bundle exec rake preview and open your browser to http://localhost:4000/example/.

This starts a Jekyll server using the theme's files and contents of the example/ directory. As modifications are made, refresh your browser to see any changes.

Found a typo in the documentation? Requesting a feature or bug fix? Search through the open and closed issues before submitting an issue to avoid duplication.

Pull requests are also appreciated. If this is your first time, it may be helpful to read up on the GitHub Flow.

If your contribution adds or changes the theme's behavior, make sure to update the documentation and/or sample content. Documentation lives in README.md while sample posts, pages, and collections are in the docs and example folders.

When submitting a pull request:

1. Clone the repo.
2. Create a branch off of master and give it a meaningful name (e.g. my-awesome-new-feature).
3. Open a pull request on GitHub and describe what problem it solves.

Michael Rose

• https://mademistakes.com
• https://twitter.com/mmistakes
• https://github.com/mmistakes

Anand S

• https://anand.ink/about
• https://github.com/anandtrex

• Font Awesome
• WeGraphics
• Unsplash

• Jekyll
• Breakpoint
• Lity

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013-2019 Michael Rose and contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

So Simple incorporates Font Awesome, Copyright (c) 2017 Dave Gandy. Font Awesome is distributed under the terms of the SIL OFL 1.1 and MIT License.

So Simple incorporates photographs from Unsplash.

So Simple incorporates photographs from WeGraphics

So Simple incorporates Breakpoint. Breakpoint is distributed under the terms of the MIT/GPL Licenses.

So Simple incorporates Lity, Copyright (c) 2015-2016, Jan Sorgalla. Lity is distributed under the terms of the MIT License](http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).

So Simple incorporates Table of Contents Toggle, Copyright (c) 2017 Timothy B. Smith. Table of Contents Toggle is distributed under the terms of the MIT License](http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).