After creating my own Jekyll theme, on which this blog is based, I decided to share it with others. Here is a detailed guide to get started with the theme.

Theme Page

Getting Started

(Assuming you know what Jekyll and Github pages are.)

  • Download this theme’s zip file from here or clone the repository using git clone https://github.com/brijeshb42/bitwiser.git. If you are cloning, then make sure to delete the gh-pages branch as it includes the files for the theme website.

  • Install ruby and then do gem install jekyll. This theme uses the latest jekyll version. So if you already have it installed, then upgrade it.

  • _config.yml describes all the variables which you are required to set. The description begins with double hash(##). And the value to be set is commented below it using #.

  • Edit _config.yml according to your requirements.
    • name : Your website name
    • disqus : disqusForumName If this value is present, disqus commenting will be automatically added to all your blog posts.
    • ga_id : googleAnalyticsID If this value is present, google analytics will be added to your website/blog. If ga_id is present, make sure that ga_domain is also present.
    • description: A short description of your website to be included in meta tag of your homepage
    • keywords : a few frequently used keywords on your site
    • links : This variable has a few commonly used social networks’ links
      • facebook: facebookId
      • twitter : twitterHandle
      • email: email@example.com
      • github: githubUsername
    • about_image: This is a new variable introduced. If defined, make sure the image is present in img directory. If not defined, a provided placeholder image is used. ** If github link is provided in links variable, then the github profile picture will be used if about_image is not defined.
    • sidebar: This is a new variable introduced. It is used to enable/disable sidebar. If present, a sidebar will be displayed. To disable sidebar, just comment this line using #.

  • After setting the values in _config.yml, you can start adding posts in the _posts directory. Remove the example posts from the directory. The name of files in this directory should be according to specifications by jekyll, i.e, YYYY-MM-DD-your-post-title.md. Note that the file name extenion can be anything from md, markdown, mkd, textile or html.

  • Replace the image files favicon.png and sharer.png with images of your own.

  • Test the site on local machine using jekyll serve in the theme directory.

  • If all works well, git push your changes to your github pages repository https://github.com/githubUserName/githubUserName.github.io

  • Then visit your blog at http://githubUserName.github.io.

  • If you want to use a custom domain, then edit the CNAME file and add your own domain example.com. Make sure your domain points to github ip address.