Fundamentals of Jekyll

Abstract

Understanding how a project is organized and constructed can provide deep insight into the principles that make it work. Organization is critical for a project of any scope, this can be true for something as simple as a Java applet to something as complex as a full mobile application back end. For that reason, most projects follow some established conventions. These conventions are kept uniform across most projects with minor modifications, which allows a new developer to get up to speed in a very short time. They know exactly where to look and find the appropriate code. In this chapter, we talk about the organizational principles used within Jekyll to manage a blog. More specifically, we talk about how Jekyll organizes a blog and what conventions should be used while working with a Jekyll blog. We discuss the implications of this organization in the context of more complex features such as inheritance for the blog theme files. We also cover the handlebars templates and how the use of handlebars allows for Jekyll magic to be added to a blog theme. Finally, we talk about whether it is practical to install Jekyll locally on your computer.