Initial Setup

25 Jun 2015 . tech . Comments
#tutorial

All features of { Personal } are controlled through variables defined in _config.yml. This guide covers the essential settings you need to configure before launching your website.

Site URL Configuration

The most critical setting is your site URL:

url: "https://yourusername.github.io"
baseurl: "/personal-jekyll-theme"

Important: The url variable is used throughout the theme for generating links. For GitHub Pages:

  • Set url to https://yourusername.github.io
  • Set baseurl to your repository name (e.g., /personal-jekyll-theme)

If hosting on a custom domain, set url to your domain and baseurl to "".

Theme Customization

Customize your color scheme by editing _sass/_variables.scss:

$primary-color: #232a2e; // Main background color
$secondary-color: #3a94c5; // Accent/link color
$font-color: #efebd4; // Text color
$background-color: $font-color;

HTML Head Settings

Configure metadata that appears in every page’s <head> section:

lang: "en"
author: "John Smith"
title: "{ John Smith }"
description: "Blog and website of John Smith, blogging mainly for tech."
keywords: "smith, personal, jekyll, theme"
favicon: "/img/favicon.ico"

These values affect SEO and how your site appears in search results and social media previews.

Control which sections appear in your navigation menu and their order:

pages_list:
  About: "about"
  Blog: "latest-post"
  Timeline: "timeline"
  Contact: "contact"

Each entry maps a display name to a section ID. To remove a section from navigation, simply delete its line. To reorder, rearrange the entries.

Google Analytics & Cookie Consent

To track your website traffic, add your Google Analytics tracking ID:

google-tracking-id: "UA-XXXXXXXX-X"

Set to false to disable tracking entirely.

Cookie Consent: When Google Analytics is enabled, the theme automatically includes a cookie consent banner (powered by TermsFeed). This ensures GDPR compliance by:

  • Showing a consent banner on first visit
  • Only loading tracking scripts after user consent
  • Providing options to accept or reject tracking cookies

No additional configuration is needed—cookie consent is handled automatically when google-tracking-id is set.

Running Locally

No local dependencies required:

docker-compose up --build

Option 2: Native Ruby

Requires Ruby 3.1.1 or compatible version:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --watch --livereload

Once running, visit http://localhost:4000 to preview your site.

Next Steps

With the initial setup complete, proceed to customize your Header and Blog settings.

Me

'Github''s Octocat was designed by Simon Oxley, alongside the white bird Twitter used (before they received a proper logo) as part of a usual routine of cranking out images for iStock. GitHub saw it, and wanted it, presumably under the notion that it can represent how complex code combines to create peculiar things, much like the octopuss... except the CEO of GitHub called it an octocat, and it has been the octocat since then.