Getting started

Step 1: Set up the prerequisites

Before you start installing the theme, make sure you have all of these prerequisites in place.

• Mac computer (recommended). If you have a PC, you need to see Jekyll on Windows. Make sure you can get Jekyll working on Windows before proceeding.
• Ruby. This should already be installed. Type which ruby to confirm.
• Rubygems. This is a package manager for Ruby (gems). Type which gem to confirm.
• Jekyllrb. To install: gem install jekyll. Type which jekyll to confirm.
• Git. Type which git to see if you already have it installed.
• Text editor (some examples: Sublime Text, Atom, WebStorm)
• iTerm - Optional but recommended instead of Terminal.
• pygments - Pygments handles syntax highlighting. In my experiments, the Pygments highlighter seemed better than the default rouge highlighter. To install Pygments, you will need Python installed. (If you don't install pygments, you'll get an error when you build the theme.) To check if Python is installed, type which python. To install Pygments: gem install pygments.rb.

Step 2: Build the theme

Before you start customizing the theme, make sure you can build the theme with the default content and settings first.

1. Make sure you satisfy all the prerequisites as listed in the previous section, "Prerequisites."

2. Download the theme from the documentation-theme-jekyll Github repository and unzip it into your ~username/projects folder.

   You can either download the theme files directly by clicking the Download Zip button on the right of the repo, or use git to clone the repository to your local machine. Note, however, that you won't be using the pull command to update the theme since you'll be customizing it with your own content and won't want to overwrite those customizations, so there isn't a huge need to clone it.

3. After downloading the theme, note some unique aspects of the file structure:

   • In the root directory, there's a separate configuration file for each unique output you're building.
   • Each configuration file has a different preview port.
   • Each configuration file also specifies a different project (and potentially a different audience, product, platform, and version). By setting unique values for these properties in your configuration file, you determine how the sidebar and top navigation is constructed.
   Tip: The main goal of this theme is to enable single sourcing. With single sourcing, you build multiple outputs from the same source, with somewhat different content in each site based on the particular product, platform, version, and audience. That's why there are separate configuration files for each output.

   In general, you build the sites by using build commands that specify the configuration file, like this:

   jekyll serve --config config_base.yml,config_designer.yml
   

   The --config parameter specifies the location of the configuration file to be used in the build. The configuration file itself contains the destination location.

   There are two configuration files used here -- config_base.yml contains common settings used in all the configuration files. The config_designer.yml file contains unique configuration properties specific to this build.

   Note: The _config.yml file in the theme's root directory is just a duplicate of the config_base.yml and config_designer.yml files combined. The _config.yml file in root allows Github Pages to build the site from the Github repo. Unless you're using Github Pages to build your sites, you don't need _config.yml in the root directory.

4. In the root directory, you'll find build_writer.sh, which is a simple shell script containing this build argument. Instead of running the command above, run the following:

   . build_writer.sh
   

   Preview the site at the preview URL shown.

5. Open a new tab in iTerm and build an additional output:

   . build_designer.sh
   

   Open a new tab in your browser and preview the site at the preview URL shown. Notice that the writer output doesn't include the Special Layouts section in the sidebar.

   If the theme builds both outputs successfully, great. You can move on to the next section: Customizing the theme. If you run into errors building the basic theme, you must solve them before moving on. See Troubleshooting for more information.

Step 3: Customize the theme

The theme shows two build outputs: one for designers, and one for writers. The dual outputs is an example of the single sourcing nature of the theme. The designers output is comprehensive, whereas the writers output is a subset of the information. Follow these steps to customize the theme with your own content.

1. If you haven't already downloaded the theme, see the previous section, "Step 2: Build the theme." Press Ctrl+C to stop the previews.

2. In the theme's root directory, rename config_writer.yml to config_developer.yml and customize all the values inside that file based on the instructions . Do the same with config_designer.yml (changing it to config_marketer.yml) and continue to clone and customize the config file for other audiences you need.

   In this theme, each output requires a separate config file. If you have 10 audiences and you want separate sites for each, then then you'll have 10 config files in this directory.

   Tip: As you customize the config files, make the port values unique so that you don't run into "Address already in use" issues when you build multiple sites and want to preview them at the same time.

3. In the _includes/custom directory, open conditions.html and customize the values there specific to your outputs. (Basically, replace writer with your developer, and designer with another marketer.)

   The conditions.html file is used to apply different requirements to the sidebar and other files. The conditions.html file is included in various parts of the theme — the sidebar.html, the topnav.html, and some of the print files.

4. Remove the content inside the pages folder, and then add your own pages in this pages folder. (Using subfolders and sub-subfolders inside the pages folder is fine — you won't have to worry about folder paths in links.)

5. Inside _data, open sidebar.yml and topnav.yml and customize the navigation.

   Warning: Don't mess up the spacing or change any of the YML level names or the site or sidebar won't build. Each new YML level is indented with two spaces.

6. In the root directory, rename build_writer.sh to build_developer.sh (same with build_designer.sh; change it to build_marketer.sh). In the content of each of these files, change the build parameters to point to the configuration file you want.

7. In the root directory, customize the index.md file. This file will be the homepage for all of your projects. Use conditional tags (for example, if site.project == "acme-writer" ...) to change the content for different builds of your site. Store the content of the homepage in your _includes/custom folder. See Conditional logic for more information on applying conditions.

8. For each of your pages where you want to insert a note or callout, add {% include linkrefs.html %} directly below the frontmatter.

   Tip: If you're using WebStorm, you can create a Jekyll template so that the frontmatter is auto-populated when you create a new Jekyll file.

9. In the _includes folder, open footer.html and customize the content. If you have different footers for different outputs, use conditional tags as you did with index.md.

10. Build your site with . build_developer.sh and . build_marketer.sh and preview it at the URLs provided.

Questions

If you have questions, contact me at tomjohnson1492@gmail.com. My regular site is http://idratherbewriting.com. I'm eager to make these installation instructions as clear as possible, so please let me know if there are areas of confusion that need clarifying.