One of the great things about github pages and jekyll websites for users of RMarkdown is that the metadata and the information about the contents of the file is stored in the same way as RMarkdown with a yaml header at the start of the document containing the additional information and parameters needed for the file to render.
I have developed this website using a jekyll template called “Beautiful Jekyll” developed by Dean Attali (github here).
Supported parameters {.tabset .tabpills}
Below is a list of the parameters that Beautiful Jekyll supports (any of these can be added to the YAML front matter of any page). Remember to also look in the _config.yml file to see additional site-wide settings.
Main parameters
These are the basic YAML parameters that you are most likely to use on most pages.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| title | Page or blog post title |
| subtitle | Short description of page or blog post that goes under the title |
| tags | List of tags to categorize the post. Separate the tags with commas and place them inside square brackets. Example: [personal, analysis, finance] |
| cover-img | Include a large full-width image at the top of the page. You can either provide the path to a single image (eg. "/path/to/img") , or a list of images to cycle through (eg. ["/path/img1", "/path/img2"]). If you want to add a caption to an image, then you must use the list notation (use [] even if you have only one image), and each image should be provided as "/path/to/img" : "Caption of image". |
| thumbnail-img | For blog posts, if you want to add a thumbnail that will show up in the feed, use thumbnail-img: /path/to/image. If no thumbnail is provided, then cover-img will be used as the thumbnail. You can use thumbnail-img: "" to disable a thumbnail. |
| comments | If you want do add comments to a specific page, use comments: true. Comments only work if you enable one of the comments providers (Facebook, disqus, staticman, utterances, giscus) in _config.yml file. Comments are automatically enabled on blog posts but not on other pages; to turn comments off for a specific post, use comments: false. |
These are the main parameters you can place inside a page’s YAML front matter that Beautiful Jekyll supports.
title Page or blog post title
subtitle Short description of page or blog post that goes under the title
bigimg Include a large full-width image at the top of the page. You can either give the path to a single image, or provide a list of images to cycle through (see my personal website as an example).
comments If you want do add Disqus comments to a specific page, use comments: true. Comments ar automatically enabled on blog posts; to turn comments off for a specific post, use comments: false. Comments only work if you set your Disqus id in the _config.yml file.
show-avatar If you have an avatar configured in the _config.yml but you want to turn it off on a specific page, use show-avatar: false. If you want to turn it off by default, locate the line show-avatar: true in the file _config.yml and change the true to false; then you can selectively turn it on in specific pages using show-avatar: true.
image If you want to add a personalized image to your blog post that will show up next to the post’s excerpt and on the post itself, use image: /path/to/img.
share-img: If you want to specify an image to use when sharing the page on Facebook or Twitter, then provide the image’s full URL here.
social-share: If you don’t want to show buttons to share a blog post on social media, use social-share: false (this feature is turned on by default).
use-site-title If you want to use the site title rather than page title as HTML document title (ie. browser tab title), use use-site-title: true. When set, the document title will take the format Site Title - Site Description (eg. My website - A virtual proof that name is awesome!). By default, it will use Page Title if it exists, or Site Title otherwise.
layout What type of page this is (default is blog for blog posts and page for other pages. You can use minimal if you don’t want a header and footer)
js List of local JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. /js/mypage.js)
Code snippits that help
ext-js List of external JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. //cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.8.2/underscore-min.js). External JavaScript files that support Subresource Integrity (SRI) can be specified using the href and sri parameters eg.
href: “//code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.min.js”
sri: “sha256-hVVnYaiADRTO2PzUGmuLJr8BLUSjGIZsDYGmIJLv2b8=”
css List of local CSS files to include in the page
ext-css List of external CSS files to include in the page. External CSS files using SRI (see ext-js parameter) are also supported.
googlefonts List of Google fonts to include in the page (eg. [“Monoton”, “Lobster”])
Parameters for SEO and social media sharing
These parameters let you control what information shows up when a page is shown in a search engine (such as Google) or gets shared on social media (such as Twitter/Facebook).
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| share-title | A title for the page. If not provided, then title will be used, and if that’s missing then the site title (from _config.yml) is used. |
| share-description | A brief description of the page. If not provided, then subtitle will be used, and if that’s missing then an excerpt from the page content is used. |
| share-img | The image to show. If not provided, then cover-img or thumbnail-img will be used if one of them is provided. |
Less commonly used parameters
These are parameters that you may not use often, but can come in handy sometimes.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| readtime | If you want a post to show how many minutes it will take to read it, use readtime: true. |
| show-avatar | If you have an avatar configured in the _config.yml but you want to turn it off on a specific page, use show-avatar: false. |
| social-share | By default, every blog post has buttons to share the page on social media. If you want to turn this feature off, use social-share: false. |
| nav-short | By default, the navigation bar gets shorter after scrolling down the page. If you want the navigation bar to always be short on a certain page, use nav-short: true |
| gh-repo | If you want to show GitHub buttons at the top of a post, this sets the GitHub repo name (eg. daattali/beautiful-jekyll). You must also use the gh-badge parameter to specify what buttons to show. |
| gh-badge | Select which GitHub buttons to display. Available options are: [star, watch, fork, follow]. You must also use the gh-repo parameter to specify the GitHub repo. |
| last-updated | If you want to show that a blog post was updated after it was originally released, you can specify an “Updated on” date. |
| layout | What type of page this is (default is post for blog posts and page for other pages). See Page types section below for more information. |
Advanced parameters
These are advanced parameters that are only useful for people who need very fine control over their website.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| footer-extra | If you want to include extra content below the social media icons in the footer, create an HTML file in the _includes/ folder (for example _includes/myinfo.html) and set footer-extra to the name of the file (for example footer-extra: myinfo.html). Accepts a single file or a list of files. |
| before-content | Similar to footer-extra, but used for including HTML before the main content of the page (below the title). |
| after-content | Similar to footer-extra, but used for including HTML after the main content of the page (above the footer). |
| head-extra | Similar to footer-extra, but used if you have any HTML code that needs to be included in the <head> tag of the page. |
| language | HTML language code to be set on the page’s <html> element. |
| full-width | By default, page content is constrained to a standard width. Use full-width: true to allow the content to span the entire width of the window. |
| js | List of local JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. /assets/js/mypage.js) |
| ext-js | List of external JavaScript files to include in the page (eg. //cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.8.2/underscore-min.js). External JavaScript files that support Subresource Integrity (SRI) can be specified using the href and sri parameters eg.href: "//code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.min.js"sri: "sha256-hVVnYaiADRTO2PzUGmuLJr8BLUSjGIZsDYGmIJLv2b8=" |
| css | List of local CSS files to include in the page |
| ext-css | List of external CSS files to include in the page. External CSS files using SRI (see ext-js parameter) are also supported. |
Page types
- post - To write a blog post, add a markdown or HTML file in the
_postsfolder. As long as you give it YAML front matter (the two lines of three dashes), it will automatically be rendered like a blog post. Look at the existing blog post files to see examples of how to use YAML parameters in blog posts. - page - Any page outside the
_postsfolder that uses YAML front matter will have a very similar style to blog posts. - home - The home layout is meant to act as the homepage of your blog posts - it will display all your blog posts, sorted from newest to oldest. A file using the
homelayout must be namedindex.html(notindex.mdor anything else!). - minimal - If you want to create a page with minimal styling (ie. without the bulky navigation bar and footer), assign
layout: minimalto the YAML front matter. - If you want to completely bypass the template engine and just write your own HTML page, simply omit the YAML front matter. Only do this if you know how to write HTML!