Chirpy

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A minimal, sidebar, responsive web design Jekyll theme, focusing on text presentation, aim to help you easily record and share your knowledge. Live Demo »

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installing
• Usage
• Contributing
• Credits
• Support
• License

Features

• Pinned Posts
• Configurable theme mode
• Double-level Categories
• Last modified date for posts
• Table of Contents
• Automatically recommend related posts
• Syntax highlighting
• Mathematical expressions
• Search
• Atom Feeds
• Disqus Comments
• Google Analytics
• GA Pageviews reporting (Advanced)
• SEO and Performance Optimization

Installing

Prerequisites

Follow the Jekyll Docs to complete the installation of basic environment (Ruby, RubyGems and Bundler).

To improve the writing experience, we need to use some script tools. If your machine is running Debian or macOS, make sure that GNU coreutils is installed. Otherwise, install by:

• Debian

$ sudo apt-get install coreutils

• macOS

$ brew install coreutils

Jekyll Plugins

Fork Chirpy from GitHub, then clone your forked repo to local:

$ git clone git@github.com:USER/jekyll-theme-chirpy.git -b master

and replace the USER above to your GitHub username.

The first time you run or build the project on local machine, perform the installation of Jekyll plugins. Go to the root of repo and run:

$ bundle install

bundle will automatically install all the dependent Jekyll Plugins that listed in the Gemfile.

Usage

Directory Structure

The main files and related brief introductions are listed below.

jekyll-theme-chirpy/
├── _data
├── _includes      
├── _layouts
├── _posts          # posts stay here
├── _scripts
├── .travis.yml     # remove it
├── .github         # remove this, too
├── assets      
├── tabs
│   └── about.md    # the ABOUT page
├── .gitignore
├── 404.html
├── Gemfile
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── _config.yml     # configuration file
├── tools           # script tools
├── docs
├── feed.xml
├── index.html
├── robots.txt
└── sitemap.xml

As mentioned above, some files or directories should be removed from your repo:

• .travis.yml
• .github

Configuration

Generally, go to _config.yml and configure the variables as needed. Some of them are typical options:

• url

  Set to your website url and there should be no slash symbol at the tail. Format: <protocol>://<domain>.

• avatar

  It defines the image file location of avatar. The sample image is /assets/img/sample/avatar.jpg, and should be replaced by your own one(a square image). Notice that a huge image file will increase the load time of your site, so keep your avatar image size as small as possible(may be https://tinypng.com/ will help).

• timezone

  To ensure that the posts' release date matches the city you live in, please modify the field timezone correctly. A list of all available values can be found on TimezoneConverter or Wikipedia.

• theme_mode

  There are three options for the theme color scheme:

  • dual - The default color scheme will follow the system settings, but if the system does not support dark mode, or the browser does not support Media Queries Level 5, the theme will be displayed as light mode by default. Anyway, the bottom left corner of the Sidebar will provide a button for users to switch color schemes.

  • dark - Always show dark mode.

  • light - Always show light mode.

Run Locally

You may want to preview the site content before publishing, so just run the script tool:

$ bash tools/run.sh

Open a modern browser and visit at http://localhost:4000.

Few days later, you may find that the file modification(e.g. edits to a post) does not refresh in real time by using run.sh. Don't worry, the advanced option -r (or --realtime) will solve this problem, but it requires fswatch to be installed on your machine. Type -h for more information.

Deploying to GitHub Pages

Before the deployment begins, checkout the file _config.yml and make sure that the url has been configured. What's more, if you prefer the Project site on GitHub and also use the default domain <username>.github.io, remember to change the baseurl to your project name that starting with a slash. For example, /project.

Option 1: Built by GitHub Pages

By deploying the site in this way, you're allowed to push the source code directly to the remote.

Note

: If you want to use any third-party Jekyll plugins that not in this list, stop reading the current approach and go to Option 2: Build locally.

1. Rename the repository to:

Site Type	Repo's Name
User or Organization	<username>.github.io
Project	Any one except <username>.github.io, let's say project

2. Commit the changes of the repo first, then run the initialization script:

$ bash tools/init.sh

Note

: The Recent Update requires the posts' latest git-log date, so make sure the changes in _posts have been committed before running this command.

it will automatically generates the Latest Modified Date and Categories / Tags page for the posts and submit a commit. Its output is similar to the following log:

[INFO] Success to update lastmod for 4 post(s).
[INFO] Succeed! 3 category-pages created.
[INFO] Succeed! 4 tag-pages created.
[Automation] Updated the Categories, Tags, Lastmod for post(s).
 11 files changed, 46 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
 ...
Updated the Categories, Tags, Lastmod for post(s).

3. Push the changes to origin/master then go to GitHub website and enable GitHub Pages service for the repo.

4. Check it out:

Site Type	Site URL
User or Organization	https://<username>.github.io/
Project	https://<username>.github.io/project/

Option 2: Build Locally

For security reasons, GitHub Pages runs on safe mode, which means the third-party Jekyll plugins or custom scripts won't work. If you want to use any another plugins that not in the whitelist, you have to generate the site locally rather than on GitHub Pages.

1. Browse to GitHub website, create a brand new repo named:

Site Type	Repo's Name
User or Organization	<username>.github.io
Project	Any one except <username>.github.io, let's say project

and clone it.

2. In the root of the source project, build your site by:

$ bash tools/build.sh -d /path/to/local/project/

The generated static files will be placed in the root of /path/to/local/project. Commit and push the changes to the master branch on GitHub.

3. Go to GitHub website and enable Pages service for the new repository.

4. Visit at:

Site Type	Site URL
User or Organization	https://<username>.github.io/
Project	https://<username>.github.io/project/

Finishing work

No matter which way you choose to deploy the website on GitHub, please enforce the HTTPS for it. See official docs: Securing your GitHub Pages site with HTTPS.

Documentation

For more details and the better reading experience, please check out the tutorial in demo site. In the meanwhile, a copy of the tutorial is also available on the Wiki.

Contributing

The old saying, "Two heads are better than one." Consequently, welcome to report bugs, improve code quality or submit a new feature. For more information, see contributing guidelines.

Credits

This theme is mainly built with Jekyll ecosystem, Bootstrap, Font Awesome and some other wonderful tools(their copyright information can be found in the relevant files).

🎉Thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to this project, their GitHub IDs are on this list. Also, I won't forget those guys who submitted the issues or unmerged PR because they reported bugs, shared ideas or inspired me to write more readable documentation.

Support

If you enjoy this theme or find it helpful, please consider becoming my sponsor, I'd really appreciate it! Click the button ❤️Sponsor at the top of the Home Page and choose a link that suits you to donate; this will encourage and help me better maintain the project.

License

This work is published under MIT License.