7 May 2018 / GETTING STARTED, TUTORIAL

Easiest way to create a Jekyll blog

Easiest way to create a Jekyll blog.

1. Pick a theme that you like on github.
   • Jekyll Now, Demo.
   • Poole, Demo.
   • Hyde, Demo.
   • Lanyon, Demo.
   • Left, Demo.
   • Skinny Bones, Demo … and a lot more! I chose Jasper2.
2. Fork the repository by clicking the fork button on the top right. You can give it a name of your choice or keep the original name. If you want the blog to be available at yourgithubusername.github.io, name your repo yourgithubusername.github.io and follow this Quick Start guide. If you want the blog at a url path like yourgithubusername.github.io/blog/ or similar, name your repo based on the path following the domain (blog in this example) and follow the rest of the steps.
3. In the forked repository, open _config.yml and click Edit
4. Edit the baseurl to match your repository’s name. For example, baseurl: "/blog/". Do NOT forget the slashes. You can edit the rest of the details later.
5. Commit the change by clicking the button at the bottom.
6. Clicking Settings tab and scroll down to Github Pages section. Under Source, select Master branch and click Save.
7. Congrats! Your blog should be online at yourgithubusername.github.io/blog/ or whatever path you chose in step 2. You can change this path by modifying the repository name and editing the _config.yml.

The source for this blog is at https://github.com/neo-anderson/blog and I forked the base from https://github.com/jekyller/jasper2

Next Steps

1. Add CNAME files and configure custom domain. Eg: asw.in/blog/
2. Go through the source files and config files and personalize the blog according to your needs.
3. Add SEO plugin https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-seo-tag
4. Use Google Webmasters tool to add properties - Eg: http://domain.com/blog/, https://domain.com/blog/, http://www.domain.com/blog/, https://www.domain.com/blog/
5. In the Webmasters tool, set the preferred domain to domain.com, instead of www.domain.com because the former looks cooler!
6. Submit the blog to other search engines.
7. Cross post to Medium (don’t forget to add canonical link), steemit/busy (no canonical link feature unfortunately) and others.

Resources

• Why Jekyll? Read this story
• Two Blogs with the same domain

  The simplest ways to manage custom domain on ghp is to set a CNAME (pointing to example.com) on username.github.io and any project repository hosting a gh-pages branch can be naturally reached at example.com/repositoryName

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