General notes and suggestions for customizing **So Simple Theme**.
* Table of Contents
{:toc}
## Installation
So Simple now requires [Jekyll](http://jekyllrb.com/) 2.x. Make sure to run `gem update jekyll` if you aren't on the latest version or `gem install jekyll` if this is your first time installing it.
If you are creating a new Jekyll site using So Simple follow these steps:
1. Fork the [So Simple repo](http://github.com/mmistakes/so-simple-theme/fork).
2. Clone the repo you just forked and rename it.
3. [Install Bundler](http://bundler.io) `gem install bundler` and Run `bundle install` to install all dependencies (Jekyll, [Jekyll-Sitemap](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-sitemap), [Octopress](https://github.com/octopress/octopress), etc)
If you want to use So Simple with an existing Jekyll site follow these steps:
1. [Download So Simple](https://github.com/mmistakes/so-simple-theme/archive/master.zip) and unzip.
2. Rename `so-simple-theme-master` to something meaningful ie: `new-site`
3. Run `bundle install` to install all dependencies (Jekyll, [Jekyll-Sitemap](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-sitemap), [Octopress](https://github.com/octopress/octopress), etc)
4. Remove demo posts/pages and replace with your own posts, pages, and any other content you want to move over.
5. Update posts' and pages' YAML to match variables used by So Simple. Full details below.
6. Update `_config.yml` and add navigation links and additional author data if applicable. Full details below.
**Pro-tip:** Delete the `gh-pages` branch after cloning and start fresh by branching off `master`. There is a bunch of garbage in `gh-pages` used for the theme's demo site that I'm guessing you won't want.
If `jekyll build` and `jekyll serve` throw errors you may have to run Jekyll with `bundled exec` instead.
> In some cases, running executables without bundle exec may work, if the executable happens to be installed in your system and does not pull in any gems that conflict with your bundle.
>
>However, this is unreliable and is the source of considerable pain. Even if it looks like it works, it may not work in the future or on another machine.
How So Simple is organized and what the various files are. All posts, layouts, includes, stylesheets, assets, and whatever else is grouped nicely under the root folder. The compiled Jekyll site outputs to `_site/`.
{% highlight text %}
so-simple-theme/
├── _includes/
| ├── browser-upgrade.html # prompt to install a modern browser for <IE9
└── theme-setup/ # theme setup page. safe to remove
{% endhighlight %}
---
## Site Setup
A quick checklist of the files you'll want to edit to get up and running.
### Site Wide Configuration
`_config.yml` is your friend. Open it up and personalize it. Most variables are self explanatory but here's an explanation of each if needed:
#### title
The title of your site... shocker!
Example `title: My Awesome Site`
#### logo
Your site's logo, appears in the header below the navigation bar and is used as a default image for Twitter Cards when a feature is not defined. Place in the `images` folder.
Used to generate absolute URLs for sitemaps, feeds and for generating canonical URLs in a page's `<head>`. When developing locally either comment this out or use something like `http://localhost:4000` so all assets load properly. *Don't include a trailing `/`*. [Protocol-relative URLs](http://www.paulirish.com/2010/the-protocol-relative-url/) are a nice option but there are a few caveats[^protocol].
[^protocol]: If you decide to use a protocol-relative URL know that it will most likely break sitemap.xml that the Jekyll-Sitemap gem creates. If a valid sitemap matters to you I'd suggest [creating your own sitemap.xml](http://davidensinger.com/2013/03/generating-a-sitemap-in-jekyll-without-a-plugin/) and apply some Liquid logic to prepend links to posts/pages with `https:`.
Google Analytics UA and Webmaster Tool verification tags can be entered under `owner` in `_config.yml`. For more information on obtaining these meta tags check [Google Webmaster Tools](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35179) and [Bing Webmaster Tools](https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/configure/verify/ownership) support.
### Navigation Links
To set what links appear in the top navigation edit `_data/navigation.yml`. Use the following format to set the URL and title for as many links as you'd like. *External links will open in a new window.*
While completely optional, I've included Octopress and some starter templates to automate the creation of new posts and pages. To take advantage of it start by installing the [Octopress](https://github.com/octopress/octopress) gem if it isn't already.
Default works great if you want all your posts in one directory, but if you're like me and want to group them into subfolders like `/posts`, `/portfolio`, etc. Then this is the command for you. By specifying the DIR it will create a new post in that folder and populate the `categories:` YAML with the same value.
{% highlight bash %}
$ octopress new post "New Post Title" --dir posts
{% endhighlight %}
### New Page
To create a new page use the following command.
{% highlight bash %}
$ octopress new page new-page/
{% endhighlight %}
This will create a page at `/new-page/index.md`
---
## Layouts and Content
Explanations of the various `_layouts` included with the theme and when to use them.
### Post and Page
These two layouts are very similar. Both have an author sidebar, allow for large feature images at the top, and optional Disqus comments. The only real difference is the post layout includes related posts at the end of the page.
### Categories
In the sample posts folder you may have noticed `categories: articles` in the YAML front matter. Categories can be used to group posts into sub-folders. If you decide to rename or add categories you will need to create new category index pages.
For example. Say you want to group all your posts under blog/ instead of articles/. In your post add `categories: blog` to the YAML front matter, rename or duplicate articles/index.md to blog/index.md and update the *for loop* to limit posts to just the blog category.
If done correctly /blog/ should be a page index of only posts with a category of `blog`.
### Feature Images
A good rule of thumb is to keep feature images nice and wide so you don't push the body text too far down. An image cropped around around 1024 x 256 pixels will keep file size down with an acceptable resolution for most devices. If you want to serve these images responsively I'd suggest looking at the [Jekyll Picture Tag](https://github.com/robwierzbowski/jekyll-picture-tag) plugin[^plugins].
[^plugins]: If you're using GitHub Pages to host your site be aware that plugins are disabled. You'll need to build your site locally and then manually deploy if you want to use this sweet plugin.
The post and page layouts make the assumption that the feature images live in the `images/` folder. To add a feature image to a post or page just include the filename in the front matter like so.
{% highlight yaml %}
image:
feature: feature-image-filename.jpg
thumb: thumbnail-image.jpg #keep it square 200x200 px is good
{% endhighlight %}
To add attribution to a feature image use the following YAML front matter on posts or pages. Image credits appear directly below the feature image with a link back to the original source if supplied.
{% highlight yaml %}
image:
feature: feature-image-filename.jpg
credit: Michael Rose #name of the person or site you want to credit
creditlink: http://mademistakes.com #url to their site or licensing
Not sure if this only effects Kramdown or if it's an issue with Markdown in general. But adding YouTube video embeds causes errors when building your Jekyll site. To fix add a space between the `<iframe>` tags and remove `allowfullscreen`. Example below:
So Simple Theme supports **link posts**, made famous by John Gruber. To activate just add `link: http://url-you-want-linked` to the post's YAML front matter and you're done. Here's an [example of a link post]({{ site.url }}/articles/sample-link-post) if you need a visual.
To enable comments [signup for a Disqus account](https://disqus.com/admin/signup/?utm_source=New-Site) and create a shortname for your site. Then add it to your `_config.yml` under the site owner section like so:
{% highlight yaml %}
site:
owner:
disqus-shortname: shortname
{% endhighlight %}
If you would like comments to appear on every post or page that uses the `post.html` layout simply add the following line to your `_config.yml` and you're done.
{% highlight yaml %}
comments: true
{% endhighlight %}
To be more selective and granualar with which posts and pages Disqus comments appear on, add `comments: true` to the YAML Front Matter of each post or page instead.
Feature and thumbnail images are used by [Open Graph](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/) and [Twitter Cards](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards) as well. If you don't assign a thumbnail the site logo is used.
Here's an example of a tweet with Twitter Cards enabled.
**Pro-Tip**: You need to [apply for Twitter Cards](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards) before they will begin showing up when links to your site are shared.
This is a very basic attempt at [indexing a Jekyll site](https://github.com/mathaywarduk/jekyll-search) and returning search results with JSON --- Google quality results this is not.
Jekyll 2.x added support for Sass files making it much easier to modify a theme's fonts and colors. By editing values found in `_sass/_variables.scss` you can fine tune the site's colors and typography.
For example if you wanted a red background instead of white you'd change `$body-color: #ebebeb;` to `$body-color: $cc0033;`.
To modify the site's JavaScript files I setup a Grunt build script to lint/concatenate/minify all scripts into `scripts.min.js`. [Install Node.js](http://nodejs.org/), then [install Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/getting-started), and then finally install the dependencies for the theme contained in `package.json`:
{% highlight bash %}
npm install
{% endhighlight %}
From the theme's root, run `grunt` to concatenate JavaScript files, and optimize all .jpg, .png, and .svg files in the `images/` folder. You can also use `grunt dev` in combination with `jekyll build --watch` to watch for updates JS files that Grunt will then automatically re-build as you write your code which will in turn auto-generate your Jekyll site when developing locally.
---
## Questions?
Found a bug or aren't quite sure how something works? By all means Ping me on Twitter [@mmistakes](http://twitter.com/mmistakes) or [file a GitHub Issue](https://github.com/mmistakes/so-simple-theme/issues/new). And if you make something cool with this theme feel free to let me know.
This theme is free and open source software, distributed under the MIT License. So feel free to use this Jekyll theme on your site without linking back to me or including a disclaimer.
