Basics

This chapter covers the basics of content creation with Hydejack.

Table of Contents

  1. Adding a page
  2. Adding an entry to the sidebar
    1. Adding a link to an external page to the sidebar
  3. Adding a category or tag
    1. Recap: Categories and tags in Jekyll
    2. Categories and tags in Hydejack
    3. Creating a new category or tag
  4. Adding an about page
  5. Adding a cover page
  6. Customization
    1. Adding custom CSS
    2. Adding custom HTML to the head
    3. Adding custom HTML to the body
  7. Adding a welcome page*
  8. Adding a projects page*
  9. Adding a project*
  10. Adding a resume*
    1. Adding a specialized resume or multiple resumes

Adding a page

You can add generic pages that support markdown content but aren’t blog posts. For example, this documentation is written in markdown, consisting of several generic pages.

To add a page, create a new markdown file and put layout: page in a front matter

---
layout: page
title:  Documentation
---

Now you can add content as you would in a blog post.

Adding an entry to the sidebar

To add links to the sidebar, populate the menu entry in _config.yml with a list of title-url pairs, e.g.:

# file: _config.yml
menu:
  - title: Blog
    url:   /blog/
  - title: Projects
    url:   /projects/
  - title: Resume
    url:   /resume/
  - title: About
    url:   /about/

Adding a link to an external page to the sidebar

To add links to external sites, simply provide a fully qualified URL, e.g.

menu:
  - title: "@qwtel"
    url:   https://qwtel.com/

Adding a category or tag

Hydejack allows you to use the list layout to show all posts of a particular category or tag.

Before you start, make sure your config files contains the features_categories and featured_tags collections:

# file: _config.yml
collections:
  featured_categories:
    permalink:         /:name/
    output:            true
  featured_tags:
    permalink:         /tag-:name/
    output:            true

Recap: Categories and tags in Jekyll

Posts in Jekyll can belong to one or more categories, as well as one or more tags. They are defined in a post’s front matter:

---
layout:     post
title:      Welcome to Jekyll
categories: [jekyll, update]
tags:       [jekyll, update]
---

Posts can also be assigned to a category based on their position within the folder structure, e.g.

├── jekyll
│   └── update
│       └── _posts
│           └── 2017-04-07-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown

This will place “Welcome to Jekyll” in the categories jekyll and update.

NOTE: This is now the preferred way of assigning categories in Hydejack, as it makes URLs correspond more naturally to the underlying folder structure.

Whether you use this method or not, categories will always be part of a posts URL, while tags will not.

TypeURL
Categories/jekyll/update/2017-04-07-welcome-to-jekyll/
Tags/2017-04-07-welcome-to-jekyll/

As far as Jekyll is concerned, this is the only difference.

Categories and tags in Hydejack

Categories and tags are displayed by Hydejack below the title, after the date. Categories are displayed with the preposition “in”, while tags are displayed with the preposition “on”, e.g.

TypeTitle
CategoriesWelcome to Jekyll¬ 07 Apr 2017 in Jekyll / Update
TagsWelcome to Jekyll¬ 07 Apr 2017 on Jekyll, Update
BothWelcome to Jekyll¬ 07 Apr 2017 in Jekyll / Update on Jekyll, Update

You can adjust these in _data/string.yml.

Creating a new category or tag

By default, categories and tags are rendered as plain text. Further steps are necessary if you want them to link to a page that contains a list of all posts that belong to that category or tag.

For each featured category or tag, a file called <category-name>.md or <tag-name>.md has to be created inside the _featured_tags and _featured_categories folders, respectively. Each file in these folders is part of a Jekyll Collection.

The meta data of a category or tag is set in the files front matter, e.g.

---
# file: _featured_categories/hyde.md
layout: list
title:  Hyde
slug:   hyde
description: >
  Hyde is a brazen two-column [Jekyll](http://jekyllrb.com) theme.
  It's based on [Poole](http://getpoole.com), the Jekyll butler.
---
layout
Must be list
title
Used as title of the page, as well as name of the category or tag as part of the line below a blog post’s title. Can be different from the name of the tag or category, as long as slug is identical to the name.
slug
Must be identical to the key used in the blog’s front matter, i.e. if you use categories: [jekyll] the slug must be jekyll. By default, the slug is derived from the title, but here it is recommended that you set it explicitly.
description
A medium-length description, used on the tag or category’s detail page and shown in a message box below the title.
menu
Set to to true if you want the category or tag to appear in the sidebar. For more information, see Adding an entry to the sidebar.

Once the file is created, the page can be found at /category/<categoryname>/ or /tag/<tagname>/.

Adding an about page

About pages are a frequent use case, so Hydejack has a special layout for it. It is a slight modification of the page layout that allows showing the author information by adding the <!--author--> marker somewhere on the page.

To create an about page, make sure layout is set to about. For more on authors, see Adding an author.

---
# file: about.md
layout: about
title:  About
---

Adding a cover page

Hydejack 8 introduces cover pages, i.e. pages witht he sidebar opened, so that it spans the entire screen. This feature is intended for landing pages. To enable it on a page, simply add cover: true to the front matter.

Cover page example

Customization

Adding custom CSS

The quickest and safest way to add custom CSS to Hydejack is via the _sass/my-inline.scss and _sass/my-style.scss files (create the folder/the files if they don’t exist).

To add CSS that gets inlined into the page, i.e. is loaded with the first request, put the CSS rules into my-inline.scss. This is intended for above-the-fold content. Otherwise put the CSS rules into my-style.scss. Note that this distinction has no effect when no_inline_css is enabled.

Adding custom HTML to the head

To add custom HTML elements to the <head> of the document, open _includes/my-head.html (create the folder/the files if they don’t exist) and add your elements there.

Adding custom HTML to the body

To add custom HTML elements to the <body> of the document, open _includes/my-body.html (create the folder/the files if they don’t exist) and add your elements there.

What’s the difference to my-scripts.html?
This file was used in earlier versions of Hydejack to accomplish the same goal. However, there are still instances were you might want to prefer my-scripts.html over my-body.html, as it won’t load scrips on redirect pages and will be ignored by browsers < IE10.

Adding a welcome page*

If you bought the PRO version of Hydejack you have access to the welcome layout. It is intended to showcase your projects and blog posts in a compact way. Technically, it is a modified version of the about layout, so it allows showing the author information where the <!--author--> marker is put. Demo.

You can create a welcome page by creating a new markdown file and setting the layout to welcome in the front matter.

---
# file: index.md
layout: welcome
title:  Welcome
cover:  true
---

Without further configuration, the welcome page will just look like a regular page. To show the two most recent projects, add the <!--projects--> marker to the content. To show the five most recent blog posts, add the <!--posts--> marker to the content.

The welcome layout also supports selecting specific projects and posts, by adding to the front matter, e.g.:

---
# file: index.md
selected_projects:
  - _projects/hydejack-v6.md
  - _projects/hyde-v2.md
more_projects: projects.md
selected_posts:
  - _posts/2017-05-03-javascripten.md
  - _posts/2012-02-07-example-content.md
more_posts: posts.md
featured: true
---
selected_projects
A list of paths to project files that should be displayed below the main content of the page. The paths are relative to the main directory with no leading ./. If no paths are provided, the two most recent projects will be used.
more_projects
The path to the main projects page. The path is relative to the main directory with no leading ./.
selected_projects
A list of paths to blog posts that should be featured on the welcome page. The paths are relative to the main directory with no leading ./. If no paths are provided, the five most recent posts will be used.
more_posts
The path to the main posts page. The path is relative to the main directory with no leading ./.
featured
Optional. When true, project thumbnails will span the full width instead of half. This setting takes precedence over the featured value of individual projects, i.e. it will apply to the entire page.

Adding a projects page*

The projects page will show all projects in a particular collection. First, you need to make sure that you have the projects collection defined in _config.yml:

# file: _config.yml
collections:
  projects:
    permalink: /projects/:path/
    output:    true

Next, add a projects.md to in the root (you can adjust the name/location to match the permalink of the collection). This file has the projects layout (mind the “s” at the end) and should have a show_collection key, with the name of the collection as a value, e.g.:

---
# file: projects.md
layout:          projects
title:           Projects*
show_collection: projects
featured:        true
---
layout
Must be projects.
title
The title of the page. Note that this name is reused as part of each individual project page (for the link that directs back to the projects page).
show_collection
The name of the collection you want display on this page. Defaults to projects.
featured
Optional. When true, project thumbnails will span the full width, instead of only half. This setting takes precedence over the featured value of individual projects, i.e. it will apply to the entire page.

Adding a project*

Projects are organized using Jekyll Collections. Each project generates an entry on the projects layout (Demo) as well as its own detail page (Demo).

Each project is defined by a file in the _projects directory. The project’s meta information is defined in the file’s front matter. You can also add markdown content. A project’s front matter should look like:

---
# file: _projects/hyde-v2.md
layout:      project
title:       Hyde v2*
date:        2 Jan 2014
screenshot:
  src:       /assets/img/projects/hyde-v2@0,25x.jpg
  srcset:
    1920w:   /assets/img/projects/hyde-v2.jpg
    960w:    /assets/img/projects/hyde-v2@0,5x.jpg
    480w:    /assets/img/projects/hyde-v2@0,25x.jpg
caption:     Hyde is a brazen two-column Jekyll theme.
description: >
  Hyde is a brazen two-column [Jekyll](http://jekyllrb.com) theme.
  It's based on [Poole](http://getpoole.com), the Jekyll butler.
links:
  - title:   Demo
    url:     http://hyde.getpoole.com
  - title:   Source
    url:     https://github.com/poole/hyde
featured:    false
---
layout
Must be set to project
date
Providing a year is the minimum requirement. Used to sort the projects.
screenshot
A 16:9 screenshot of the project.

You can pass an URL to an image, but it is recommended that you provide a src-srcset pair (see example above).

Hydejack will show the screenshot in various sizes, depending on the screen width, so that no specific size will fit all. Instead, it is recommended that you use a mipmap-like approach, providing the image in multiple sizes, each image half the width of the previous one. The src key is a fallback image for browsers that don’t support the srcset attribute. The keys of the srcset hash will be used as descriptors.

For more information on srcset, see the documentation at MDN, or this article from CSS-Tricks.

caption
A short description, shown as part of each “project card” in the projects layout.
description
A medium-length description, used on the project’s detail page as meta description and shown as message box below the screenshot.
links
A list of title-url pairs that link to external resources related to this project.
author
Optional. The author shown below the project, similar to posts.
featured
Optional. When true, the project preview will span the full content width. You can use this for projects that should receive more attention. You can set/override this for an entire page, by setting featured in the front matter (applies to the projects and welcome layout).

Adding a resume*

Hydejack’s PRO version features a generalized resume layout. Demo.

It generates the resume page from a valid JSON Resume, which is good news if you already have a JSON resume. Otherwise, there are various ways of obtaining one:

Once you have a JSON Resume, place it into _data.

To render a resume page, create a new markdown file and set the layout to resume in the front matter:

---
# file: resume.md
layout: resume
title:  Resume
description: >
  A short description of the page for search engines (~150 characters long).
---

NOTE: You can download the final resume.json (minified) from the assets folder. When running locally, you can find it at _site/assets/resume.json.

Adding a specialized resume or multiple resumes

You can add a specialized resume or multiple resumes by adding the resume YAML to the front matter under the resume key. E.g.:

---
# file: resume.md
layout: resume
title:  Resume
description: >
  A short description of the page for search engines (~150 characters long).
resume:
  basics:
    name: "Richard Hendricks"
    label: "Programmer"
    picture: "/assets/icons/icon.png"
  # ...
---

Continue with Writing

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