Basically Basic Jekyll Theme

Basically Basic is a Jekyll theme meant as a substitute for the default Minima, with a few enhancements thrown in for good measure:

• Clean responsive design with six customizable skins
• Curriculum Vitæ/Resume layout powered by JSON data
• About page layout
• Site-wide search provided by Algolia or Lunr.
• Disqus Comments and Google Analytics support
• SEO best practices via Jekyll SEO Tag

Installation

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.

Ruby Gem Method

1. Add this line to your Jekyll site's Gemfile:

   gem "jekyll-theme-basically-basic"
   

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

   theme: jekyll-theme-basically-basic
   

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

   bundle install
   

GitHub Pages Method

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: "mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic@1.4.5" 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 Customizing Your Site (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 to set things up check GitHub's documentation.

Remove the Unnecessary

If you forked or downloaded the jekyll-theme-basically-basic repo you can safely remove the following files and folders:

• .editorconfig
• .gitattributes
• .github
• .scss-lint.yml
• CHANGELOG.md
• jekyll-theme-basically-basic.gemspec
• LICENSE
• Rakefile
• README.md
• screenshot.png
• /docs
• /example

Upgrading

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

To check which version you are currently using, view the source of your built site and you should something similar to:

<!--
    Basically Basic Jekyll Theme 1.4.5
    Copyright 2017-2018 Michael Rose - mademistakes.com | @mmistakes
    Free for personal and commercial use under the MIT license
    https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-basically-theme/blob/master/LICENSE
-->

At the top of every .html file, /assets/css/main.css, and /assets/js/main.js.

Ruby Gem

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

Remote Theme

Verify you have the latest version assigned in _config.yml

remote_theme: "mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic@1.4.5"

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"

Use Git

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 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/mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic.git.

To add it you can do the following:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/mmistakes/jekyll-theme-basically-basic.git

Pull Down Updates

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.

Update Files Manually

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 it's probably a good idea to review the theme's commit history to see what's changed since.

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, /assets/js/main.js, or *.html may be cached.

Structure

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

Please note: If you installed Basically Basic via the Ruby Gem method, theme files found in /_layouts, /_includes, /_sass, and /assets will be missing. This is normal as they are bundled with the jekyll-theme-basically-basic gem.

jekyll-theme-basically-basic
├── _data                      # data files
|  └── theme.yml               # theme settings and custom text
├── _includes                  # theme includes and SVG icons
├── _layouts                   # theme layouts (see below for details)
├── _sass                      # Sass partials
├── assets
|  ├── javascripts
|  |  └── main.js
|  └── stylesheets
|     └── main.scss
├── _config.yml                # sample configuration
└── index.md                   # sample home page (all posts/not paginated)

Starting Fresh

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

• _config.yml
• /_data/theme.yml
• index.md

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

Starting from jekyll new

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

Edit _config.yml and create _data/theme.yml as instructed above and you're good to go.

Configuration

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

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

Skin

This theme comes in six different skins (color variations). To change skins add one of the following to your /_data/theme.yml file:

skin: default	skin: night	skin: plum

skin: sea	skin: soft	skin: steel

Google Fonts

This theme allows you to easily use Google Fonts throughout the theme. Simply add the following to your /_data/theme.yml, replacing the font name and weights accordingly.

google_fonts:
  - name: "Fira Sans"
    weights: "400,400i,600,600i"
  - name: "Fira Sans Condensed"

Text

To change text found throughout the theme add the following to your /_data/theme.yml file and customize as necessary.

t:
  skip_links: "Skip links"
  skip_primary_nav: "Skip to primary navigation"
  skip_content: "Skip to content"
  skip_footer: "Skip to footer"
  menu: "Menu"
  search: "Search"
  site_search: "Site Search"
  results_found: "Result(s) found"
  search_placeholder_text: "Enter your search term..."
  home: "Home"
  newer: "Newer"
  older: "Older"
  email: "Email"
  subscribe: "Subscribe"
  read_more: "Read More"
  posts: "Posts"
  page: "Page"
  of: "of"
  min_read: "min read"
  present: "Present"
  cv_awards: "Awards"
  cv_summary_contact: "Contact"
  cv_summary_contact_email: "Email"
  cv_summary_contact_phone: "Phone"
  cv_summary_contact_website: "Website"
  cv_location: "Location"
  cv_education: "Education"
  cv_education_courses: "Courses"
  cv_interests: "Interests"
  cv_languages: "Languages"
  cv_publications: "Publications"
  cv_references: "References"
  cv_skills: "Skills"
  cv_volunteer: "Volunteer"
  cv_work: "Work"

Navigation

By default all internal pages with a title will be added to the "off-canvas" menu. For more granular control and sorting of these menu links:

1. Create a custom list to override the default setting by adding a navigation_pages array to your /_data/theme.yml file.

2. Add raw page paths in the order you'd like:

   navigation_pages:
     - about.md
     - cv.md
   

Each menu link's title and URL will be populated based on their title and permalink respectively.

Pagination

Break up the main listing of posts into smaller lists and display them over multiple pages by enabling pagination.

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

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem "jekyll-paginate"
   end
   

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

   paginate: 5  # amount of posts to show per page
   paginate_path: /page:num/
   

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

   layout: home
   paginate: true
   

Search

To enable site-wide search add search: true to your _config.yml.

Lunr (default)

The default search uses Lunr to build a search index of all your documents. This method is 100% compatible with sites hosted on GitHub Pages.

Note: Only the first 50 words of a post or page's body content is added to the Lunr search index. Setting search_full_content to true in your _config.yml will override this and could impact page load performance.

Algolia

For faster and more relevant search (see demo):

1. Add the jekyll-algolia gem to your Gemfile, in the :jekyll_plugins section.

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem "jekyll-feed"
     gem "jekyll-seo-tag"
     gem "jekyll-sitemap"
     gem "jekyll-paginate"
     gem "jekyll-algolia"
   end
   

   Once this is done, download all dependencies by running bundle install.

2. Switch search providers from lunr to algolia in your _config.yml file:

   search_provider: algolia
   

3. Add the following Algolia credentials to your _config.yml file.