- [Build your website in 3 steps](#build-your-website-in-3-steps)

- [Add your own content](#add-your-own-content)

- [Last important thing: YAML front matter ("parameters" for a page)](#last-important-thing-yaml-front-matter-parameters-for-a-page)

**Note:** The video above goes through the setup for a user with username `daattalitest`. I only edited one setting in the `_config.yml` file in the video, but **you should actually go through the rest of the settings as well. Don't be lazy, go through all the settings :)**

To add pages to your site, you can either write a markdown file (`.md`) or you can write an HTML file directly. It is much easier to write markdown than HTML, so I suggest you do that (use the [tutorial I mentioned above](http://markdowntutorial.com/) if you need to learn markdown). You can look at some files on this site to get an idea of how to write markdown. To look at existing files, click on any file that ends in `.md`, for example [`aboutme.md`](./aboutme.md). On the next page you can see some nicely formatted text (there is a word in bold, a link, bullet points), and if you click on the pencil icon to edit the file, you will see the markdown that generated the pretty text. Very easy!

As mentioned previously, you can use [prose.io](http://prose.io/) to add or edit files instead of doing it directly on GitHub, it can be a little easier that way.

In order to have your new pages use this template and not just be plain pages, you need to add [YAML front matter](http://jekyllrb.com/docs/frontmatter/) to the top of each page. This is where you'll give each page some parameters that I made available, such as a title and subtitle. I'll go into more detail about what parameters are available later. If you don't want to use any parameters on your new page (this also means having no title), then use the empty YAML front matter:

**Important takeaway: ALWAYS add the YAML front matter to EVERY page, which is two lines with three dashes. If you have any parameters, they go between the two lines.**

If you don't include YAML then your file will not use the template.

**Beautiful Jekyll** is designed to look great on both large-screen and small-screen (mobile) devices. Load up your site on your phone or your gigantic iMac, and the site will work well on both, though it will look slightly different.

Many personalization settings in `_config.yml`, such as setting your name and site's description, setting your avatar to add a little image in the navigation bar, customizing the links in the menus, customizing what social media links to show in the footer, etc.

If you want to enable comments on your site, Beautiful Jekyll supports the [Disqus](https://disqus.com/) comments plugin. To use it, simply sign up to Disqus and add your Disqus shortname to the `disqus` parameter in the `_config.yml`.

If the `disqus` parameter is set in the configuration file, then all blog posts will have comments turned on by default. To turn off comments on a particular blog post, add `comments: false` to the YAML front matter. If you want to add comments on the bottom of a non-blog page, add `comments: true` to the YAML front matter.

Beautiful Jekyll lets you easily add Google Analytics to all your pages. This will let you track all sorts of information about visits to your website, such as how many times each page is viewed and where (geographically) your users come from. To add Google Analytics, simply sign up to [Google Analytics](http://www.google.com/analytics/) to obtain your Google Tracking ID, and add this tracking ID to the `google_analytics` parameter in `_config.yml`.

By default, all blog posts will have buttons at the bottom of the post to allow people to share the current page on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn. You can choose to enable/disable specific social media websites in the `_config.yml` file. You can also turn off the social media buttons on specific blog posts using `social-share: false` in the YAML front matter.

- **post** - To write a blog post, add a markdown or HTML file in the `_posts` folder. 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 `_posts` folder that uses YAML front matter will have a very similar style to blog posts.

- **minimal** - If you want to create a page with minimal styling (ie. without the bulky navigation bar and footer), assign `layout: minimal` to 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!

These are the main parameters you can place inside a page's YAML front matter that **Beautiful Jekyll** supports.

ex-css | List of external CSS files to include in the page

googlefonts | List of Google fonts to include in the page (eg. `["Monoton", "Lobster"]`)

If you're not sure what the difference is, then ignore this section.

If you want to use this theme for a project page for a specific repository instead of your main GitHub user page, that's no problem. The demo for this site ([daattali.github.io/beautiful-jekyll](http://deanattali.com/beautiful-jekyll)) is actually set up as a project page while my personal site ([daattali.github.io](http://deanattali.com)) is a regular user page. The only difference is that in the `_config.yml`, you should set `baseurl` to be `/projectname` instead of `""`.

To set up a GitHub Project page, simply fork this repository into a branch called `gh-pages` in your repository. Whatever is under the `gh-pages` branch will be served by Jekyll. Your site will be at `http://username.github.io/projectname/`.

I wrote [a blog post](http://deanattali.com/2015/03/12/beautiful-jekyll-how-to-build-a-site-in-minutes/) describing some more advanced features that I used in my website that are applicable to any Jekyll site. It describes how I used a custom URL for my site (deanattali.com instead of daattali.github.io), how to add a Google-powered search into your site, and provides a few more details about having an RSS feed.

To my huge surprise, Beautiful Jekyll has been used in over 500 websites in its first 6 months alone! Here is a hand-picked selection of some websites that use Beautiful Jekyll.

Want your website featured here? [Contact me](http://deanattali.com/aboutme#contact) to let me know about your website.

| Website | Description |

| :------ |:----------- |

| [ja2-stracciatella.github.io](http://ja2-stracciatella.github.io) | Jagged Alliance 2 Stracciatella |

| [PatientOutcomeFunding.org](http://www.patientoutcomefunding.org/) | Patient Outcome Funding |

| Website | Who | What |

| :------ |:--- | :--- |

| [otomatikmuhendis.com](http://otomatikmuhendis.com/) | Olcay Bayram | Software engineer |

Beautiful Jekyll is meant to be so simple to use that you can do it all within the browser. However, if you'd like to develop locally on your own machine, that's possible too if you're comfortable with command line. Follow these simple steps to do that with Docker: