• Lesson 3: Jekyll Themes
    • Introduction
    • Understanding Jekyll Themes
    • Theme Switching Guide
    • Theme Features (Minima vs. TeXt)
    • Troubleshooting Theme Issues
    • Conclusion

Lesson 3: Jekyll Themes

Introduction

Jekyll themes provide a powerful way to quickly style and structure your GitHub Pages website without extensive CSS coding. This lesson will further delve into how Jekyll themes work, how to switch between them, and how to troubleshoot common issues, enabling you to effectively manage your site’s visual presentation.

Understanding Jekyll Themes

A Jekyll theme is a collection of layouts, includes, stylesheets, and scripts that define the look and feel of your website. When you apply a theme, Jekyll uses these files to render your content consistently across all pages. This modular approach allows for rapid development and easy customization.

  • Layouts: HTML files (e.g., default.html, page.html, post.html) that provide the overall structure. Your content is injected into these layouts.
  • Includes: Reusable HTML snippets (e.g., headers, footers, navigation menus).
  • Assets: CSS, JavaScript, and images that control visual design and interactivity.
  • Configuration: Theme-specific settings often defined in _config.yml or in the theme’s own configuration files.
FRQ 1: Explain why Jekyll uses layouts and includes. How do these features make web development easier?

Theme Switching Guide

Switching between Jekyll themes involves modifying your _config.yml file and ensuring that the necessary theme files are correctly referenced. The process can be simplified using scripts or by directly editing the configuration. 


# Example snippet from _config.yml
remote_theme: jekyll/minima
FRQ 2: Describe the role of _config.yml in Jekyll. Why is it important for themes?

Theme Features (Minima vs. TeXt)

Different themes offer distinct features and design philosophies. Here’s a comparison of two popular Jekyll themes:

Feature Minima Theme TeXt Theme
Design Clean, minimal Modern iOS 11-inspired
Dark Mode Supported Supported (6 skins)
Responsiveness Mobile responsive Mobile responsive
Math/Diagrams Limited MathJax & Mermaid supported
FRQ 3: Compare the strengths of Minima and TeXt. Which would you choose and why?

Troubleshooting Theme Issues

  1. Missing SASS Variables: Ensure your theme installation is complete.
  2. Build Errors: Run make clean && make or bundle exec jekyll build.
  3. Theme Not Switching: Double-check the remote_theme value in _config.yml.
  4. Backup: Always back up _config.yml before big changes.
FRQ 4: A student’s theme won’t switch even after editing _config.yml. What steps would you take to troubleshoot?

Conclusion

Jekyll themes are a powerful asset for creating visually appealing and functional GitHub Pages sites. By understanding their structure, switching methods, and troubleshooting techniques, you can leverage themes to enhance your web projects and focus more on content creation rather than design details.

FRQ 5: Summarize in your own words why themes are valuable for developers using Jekyll.