Structuring Success How to Organize Your Jekyll Project for GitHub Pages

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When you start a Jekyll project, the way you organize your files and folders sets the stage for future success. A well-structured project is easier to navigate, simpler to maintain, and much more scalable as your website grows. It also makes your project more intuitive for anyone else who might need to work on it. This article will provide you with best practices and actionable tips for organizing your Jekyll project effectively, ensuring you build a clean and professional website on GitHub Pages. By following these guidelines, you can avoid common pitfalls and create a site that is a pleasure to work with, both for you and for the Jekyll build system.

Table of Contents

Jekyll's predictable file structure is one of its greatest strengths, but it still requires some thoughtful organization on your part. While Jekyll will work even with a messy folder, a clean structure makes a huge difference in your workflow. It helps you quickly find what you're looking for, whether it's a specific blog post, a stylesheet, or a layout file. A good structure is the foundation of a successful website, so let's start with the most important part: organizing your content.

Organizing Your Content The Right Way

Consistent Naming Conventions

One of the simplest yet most effective things you can do is to adopt a consistent naming convention for your files. For all your files and folders, it is a best practice to use only lowercase letters and hyphens to separate words. For example, use about-me.md instead of About Me.md. This prevents issues with URLs and file paths, which can be inconsistent across different operating systems. For your blog posts, you must follow Jekyll's strict convention: YYYY-MM-DD-your-post-title.md. This format is not optional; it's how Jekyll determines the post's date and generates its URL. By following this rule, you ensure your blog is always sorted correctly and that your posts are processed without error.

Separating Posts from Pages

Jekyll makes a clear distinction between chronological content (posts) and static content (pages), and you should, too. All of your blog posts belong in the _posts directory. For all other static content, such as your "About" page, "Contact" page, or a custom landing page, you should place the files directly in the root directory. You can also create subfolders to organize your pages, such as /projects/my-first-project.md. This approach keeps your root directory clean and makes it easy to understand the purpose of each piece of content. When you look at your project folder, you can immediately tell which files are static pages and which are blog posts.

Best Practices for Design and Reusability

Centralizing Your Layouts and Includes

To keep your site's design consistent and easy to manage, you should centralize your design files in the _layouts and _includes folders. Put all your HTML templates in the _layouts directory. You can create a hierarchical structure, such as a default.html layout that other layouts inherit from, to avoid repeating code. For small, reusable snippets of HTML—like a navigation bar, a footer, or a social media icon block—use the _includes folder. By placing these components here, you can insert them into any layout or page using a simple Liquid tag. This makes your code modular and much easier to maintain; if you need to update your footer, you only have to do it in one file.

.
├── _layouts/
│   ├── default.html
│   └── post.html
├── _includes/
│   ├── header.html
│   └── footer.html
└── ...

Managing Static Assets Cleanly

Your website's static assets, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files, should be kept in a dedicated folder. The most common and recommended practice is to create a folder named assets at the root of your project. Inside it, you can create subdirectories for each type of asset: /assets/css/, /assets/js/, and /assets/images/. This prevents these files from cluttering your root directory and makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Jekyll treats any folder not starting with an underscore as a static asset and copies it directly to the final website, so this simple organization system works perfectly out of the box.

Keeping Your Project Clean and Professional

The Power of .gitignore

For any project using Git and GitHub Pages, a .gitignore file is essential. The most important thing to add to this file is the _site/ folder. This is the temporary output directory that Jekyll creates when it builds your site. You should never commit this folder to your Git repository, as it is automatically generated and can be quite large. Including _site/ in your .gitignore file prevents it from being tracked by Git, keeping your repository clean and focused on your source files. You can also add other temporary or generated files, such as your .sass-cache/ folder or your Gemfile.lock, if you prefer not to track them.

Avoiding Unnecessary Files

Another tip for keeping your project clean is to be mindful of what you place in your root directory. Only the most essential files, such as your _config.yml, Gemfile, and main pages, should be at the root. Avoid placing draft posts, old notes, or other temporary files here. If you need a place for drafts, you can create a folder named _drafts. Jekyll knows to ignore this folder by default, allowing you to work on new posts without them being published. By following these simple rules, you can ensure your Jekyll project is not only well-structured but also professional and easy to manage for years to come.

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