Powering Your GitHub Pages with Jekyll A Deep Dive into the Folder Layout

-

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the files in a Jekyll project, you're not alone. The folder layout might seem complex at first, but it's actually the key to Jekyll’s power. This structure is designed to separate your content from your design and your configuration from everything else. By understanding the purpose of each directory, you can build a more powerful, organized, and scalable website on GitHub Pages. This article will take a deeper dive into the folder layout, explaining not just what each folder is for, but also how it enables you to create a professional and easy-to-maintain website. Think of it as peeling back the layers to see how Jekyll truly works behind the scenes.

Table of Contents

Jekyll is a static site generator, which means it takes your raw files—your Markdown content, your layouts, and your configuration—and "builds" them into a complete website. This is different from a traditional content management system where everything happens in a database. This file-based approach is what makes Jekyll so fast and secure. The folder structure is the recipe that tells Jekyll how to combine all the ingredients to create the final product. Let's break down this recipe by looking at the three main layers of a Jekyll site.

The Three Layers of Your Jekyll Site

Layer 1 The Content Engine

At the heart of your Jekyll site is your content, and it lives in two primary places: the _posts directory and the root directory. The _posts directory is specifically for your chronological content, like blog articles. Each post is a file named with a date, which allows Jekyll to automatically sort them and generate your blog feed. This is the main engine of your blog. For other static content, such as an "About" page, a "Contact" page, or a custom landing page, you simply place the files directly in the root directory. For example, a file named contact.md will become the /contact/ page on your site. This clear separation of content types makes your project easy to navigate and manage.

Within each of these content files, you use YAML front matter at the very top. This is a block of metadata enclosed by three hyphens. This front matter is incredibly important because it's how you give Jekyll instructions for that specific file. You can tell it what the page title is, which layout to use, and even set a custom URL. This front matter is the bridge between your content and your design templates.

Layer 2 The Design Framework

The design of your Jekyll site is powered by two main folders: _layouts and _includes. The _layouts directory is where you store the full HTML templates for your pages. You can have a default.html layout that provides the overall structure of your site, including the header and footer. Then, you can create more specific layouts like a post.html for your blog posts or a page.html for your static pages. These specific layouts can even inherit from the default layout, allowing you to create a consistent design across your entire site with minimal code repetition. This is the core of Jekyll's templating system.

The _includes directory is for smaller, reusable pieces of HTML. Think of it as your toolbox of components. Any small part of your website that you want to use in multiple places—like a navigation menu, a social media block, or a contact form—can be saved as a file in this folder. You can then insert it into a layout or a page using a simple Liquid tag, such as {% include header.html %}. This modular approach makes your code cleaner and your site much easier to maintain. If you need to make a change to a reusable component, you only have to edit it in one place.

.
├── _layouts/
│   ├── default.html
│   └── post.html
├── _includes/
│   ├── header.html
│   └── footer.html
└── _posts/
    └── 2025-08-12-my-first-post.md  <-- This file uses the 'post' layout

Layer 3 The Configuration Core

The final layer is the configuration, which is handled primarily by the _config.yml file. This file sits at the root of your project and is the master control panel for your entire site. It's a single source of truth for all your global settings, from your site's title and description to its base URL on GitHub Pages. You can also use it to set the default permalink structure for your blog posts and configure any plugins you're using. This centralized configuration ensures that all your settings are in one easy-to-find place. Another important file in this layer is the Gemfile, which manages all the Ruby gems and plugins your Jekyll site relies on, ensuring a consistent build process everywhere.

The Assets and the Final Product

Managing Static Assets Like a Pro

Your Jekyll project also needs static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript. For these files, it's a best practice to create a directory at the root of your project, often called assets. Inside this folder, you can create subdirectories for css, js, and images. Jekyll knows to treat any file or folder that doesn't start with an underscore as a static asset. It will simply copy these files directly to the final output folder without any processing. This method keeps your project organized and makes it easy to link to your files. For example, a link to your stylesheet would simply be /assets/css/style.css.

Understanding the Final Output

When you run the Jekyll build command, all of these layers—the content, the design, and the configuration—are combined to create your final, static website. This complete website is placed inside a directory named _site. This is the final output folder that contains all the pure HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images that a web browser needs. It's the folder you deploy to GitHub Pages. It's essential to remember that you should never edit anything in the _site folder directly, as it gets completely erased and rebuilt every time you build your site. To prevent accidentally committing this temporary folder to your Git repository, always add _site/ to your .gitignore file.

Comments

Post a Comment