The main things you might need to change here are:
site: Journal Jekyll Theme – change this to your website's name
url: – the full URL that your site will be hosted at, e.g. https://your-domain.com
baseurl: – add a base URL here if you will be publishing the site inside a folder, e.g. https://your-domain.com/project/ – or if you're hosting it as a 'project page' on GitHub Pages. Example: baseurl: /project
When using baseurl, you should reference images in your post/project Frontmatter without the baseurl, e.g. /images/image.jpg but images inside the Markdown content should include the baseurl snippet, e.g. {{site.baseurl}}/images/image.jpg
paginate: 6 – change this to set the number of blog posts on each page
You can also change more advanced things here like the path names, collections etc. You do not need to change any of these to achieve the same look as the demo, so best to leave everything else unless you are confident.
You'll find this inside the _data folder – this is where you can set all of the theme options.
Basic settings
site_title – change this to your website's title. This shows up in the browser's title bar, and in the sidebar.
site_tagline – change this to be a description of your site. This shows up under the title/logo in the sidebar.
favicon_image – change this to the location of your favicon image, which shows up in the browser's title bar.
Header settings
logo_image – if you'd like to use a logo instead of plain text title in your sidebar, enter the link to it here.
logo_width – set the width (in pixels) that your logo should appear at. This is useful for adding retina display support – for example if your original image is 400px wide, you could set this value to 200 to display a retina-ready image.
overlay_opacity – this sets the opacity of the sidebar overlay, and when you hover over portfolio items. Use a decimal value here, e.g. 0.8 will give you 80% opacity.
Menu settings
This allows you to set the links inside your menu. Add each one as a list item with a title and url. When hosting on GitHub Pages, make sure you leave a trailing / at the end of links to category pages (e.g. /blog/ or /projects/).
Grid settings
grid_spacing – this sets the amount of spacing (in pixels) between each item in grid image galleries.
Contact settings
The theme comes with a pre-made contact form that you can use with Formspree, which is free for up to 50 submissions per month. They also have two great paid plans that offer advanced features. Use the link above to set up your account and then paste the 'endpoint' integration code into the theme settings:
form_action – this is the form endpoint attribute that you get from FormSpree, for example https://formspree.io/abcdefgh
confirmation_url – by default the user is shown a default Formspree thank you page. If you have a premium plan, you can use this setting to provide an alternative URL for that page, for example /thanks – we have included a basic thank you page with the theme.
email_subject – choose the subject of the email you receive from Formspree.
send_button_text – change the text used on the form submit button.
Hint: you can add the contact form to any page of your site using the include – {% include contact-form.html %} – for example if you wanted to have the contact form on your About page.
Social settings
Here you can add links to your profiles on social networks, and they'll be shown in the sidebar. Simply add your URL next to the ones you want to show.
Color settings
Here you can set all the different colors used by the theme. Try them out and find the color pallette that works for you!
Font settings
font_embed – add an embed code from an external font service. This allows you to use services like Google Fonts or Typekit.
title_font – set the CSS name for the font used on titles.
body_font – set the CSS anme for the font used for body text.
regular_weight – set the font weight for regular styled text.
bold_weight – set the font weight for bold styled text.
Below these options, you'll see options for each typographical element used in the theme. For each, you can set the following options:
small_size – the size (in pixels) used for this element on small size screens like mobile phones.
medium_size – the size (in pixels) used for this element on medium size screens like tablets.
large_size – the size (in pixels) used for this element on largers screens like laptops and desktops.
weight – the font weight for this element.
letter_spacing – the letter spacing (in ems) for this element.
line_height – the line-height (in decimals) for this element.
Advanced options
ajax_loading – use true to enable Ajax loading throughout your site. Use false to disable it and load pages normally – this can be helpful if you're adding plugins or other javascript to your pages.
analytics_code – use this option to add your Google Analytics code.
custom_styles – use this option to add custom CSS styles to the theme.
header_js – use this option to insert javascript into the header of the page.
footer_js – use this option to insert javascript at the end of the page.
Inside the /images/ folder you'll find a few images included with the theme.
The images in the /demo/ subfolder are used in the demo project, post and page – you can delete those if you don't need them.
favicon.png – you should replace this with the favicon image you'd like to use for your website.
The theme comes with some pages set up ready for your content.
This is your website home page, showing your latest blog posts. You can edit some details in the Front Matter at the top of the page:
title – this sets the page title, which shows up in the browser's title bar and on search engine results, social shares etc.
description – this sets the page meta description, which shows up on search engine results, social shares etc.
featured_image – this sets the page meta image, which shows up on social shares.
This is the blog listing page, which shows all your project posts. You can edit the same things as on the home page to customise it for your website, and also a subtitle field below the main page title.
These control the main content of your website, and are found inside the _projects, _posts and _pages folders.
Take a look at the demo content inside each folder for full descriptions on what you can do inside these, and to use as a template for your own content.