Warning

The master branch is under active development towards a semver-major release with non-backwards-compatible changes.

While you may use this theme in the current state either via the jekyll-remote-theme plugin or via a Gemfile, it is recommended to point to a particular git ref that does not break your site's existing render and gradually update to a newer git ref via a pull request after consulting this repository's commit-log and README.

Pointing directly to the HEAD commit of the master branch is risky and may contain changes that break your site.

Example of pointing to a particular git ref via jekyll-remote-theme plugin:

# _config.yml
remote_theme: "jekyll/minima@1e8a445"

Example of pointing to a particular git ref via Gemfile (with theme: minima in _config.yml)

# Gemfile
gem "minima", github: "jekyll/minima", ref: "1e8a445"

Disclaimer: The information here may vary depending on the version you're using.
Please refer to the README.md bundled within the theme-gem for information specific to your version or by pointing your browser to the Git tag corresponding to your version. e.g. https://github.com/jekyll/minima/blob/v2.5.0/README.md.
Running bundle show minima will provide you with the local path to your current theme version.

It's Jekyll's default (and first) theme. It's what you get when you run jekyll new.

Theme preview

Installation

Add this line to your Jekyll site's Gemfile:

gem "minima"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Contents At-A-Glance

Minima has been scaffolded by the jekyll new-theme command and therefore has all the necessary files and directories to have a new Jekyll site up and running with zero-configuration.

Layouts

Refers to files within the _layouts directory, that define the markup for your theme.

base.html — The base layout that lays the foundation for subsequent layouts. The derived layouts inject their contents into this file at the line that says {{ content }} and are linked to this file via FrontMatter declaration layout: base.
home.html — The layout for your landing-page / home-page / index-page. [More Info.]
page.html — The layout for your documents that contain FrontMatter, but are not posts.
post.html — The layout for your posts.

Base Layout

From Minima v3 onwards, the base layout is named base.html instead of default.html to avoid confusing new users into assuming that name holds special status.

Users migrating from older versions with customized _layouts/default.html are advised to rename their copy to _layouts/base.html. Migrating users with additional customized layouts may either update front matter references to former default.html layout or create a new default.html layout referencing the current base.html, whichever route being the easiest:

---
# new `_layouts/default.html` for backwards-compatibility when multiple
# layouts have been customized.
layout: base
---
{{ content }}

Home Layout

home.html is a flexible HTML layout for the site's landing-page / home-page / index-page.

Main Heading and Content-injection

From Minima v2.2 onwards, the home layout will inject all content from your index.md / index.html before the Posts heading. This will allow you to include non-posts related content to be published on the landing page under a dedicated heading. We recommended that you title this section with a Heading2 (##).

Usually the site.title itself would suffice as the implicit 'main-title' for a landing-page. But, if your landing-page would like a heading to be explicitly displayed, then simply define a title variable in the document's front matter and it will be rendered with an <h1> tag.

Post Listing

This section is optional from Minima v2.2 onwards.
It will be automatically included only when your site contains one or more valid posts or drafts (if the site is configured to show_drafts).

The title for this section is Posts by default and rendered with an <h2> tag. You can customize this heading by defining a list_title variable in the document's front matter.

Includes

Refers to snippets of code within the _includes directory that can be inserted in multiple layouts (and another include-file as well) within the same theme-gem.

comments.html — Markup to render comments (via Disqus; active only when Jekyll environment is set to production).
footer.html — Defines the site's footer section.
google-analytics.html — Inserts Google Analytics module (active only in production environment).
head.html — Code-block that defines the <head></head> in default layout.
custom-head.html — Placeholder to allow users to add more metadata to <head />.
header.html — Defines the site's main header section that consists of the site's title and navigation.
nav-items.html — Contains the logic and markup to render individual link items for the site's navigation.
social.html — Renders social-media icons based on the minima:social_links data in the config file using the latest version of Font Awesome Free webfonts via remote CDN.
sub-footer.html — Placeholder to allow inserting markup (e.g. deferred scripts) before the </body> tag.

Sass

Refers to .scss files within the _sass directory that define the theme's styles.

minima/skins/classic.scss — The "classic" skin of the theme. Used by default.
minima/initialize.scss — A component that defines the theme's skin-agnostic variable defaults and sass partials. It imports the following components (in the following order):
- minima/custom-variables.scss — A hook that allows overriding variable defaults and mixins. (Note: Cannot override styles)
- minima/_base.scss — Sass partial for resets and defines base styles for various HTML elements.
- minima/_layout.scss — Sass partial that defines the visual style for various layouts.
- minima/custom-styles.scss — A hook that allows overriding styles defined above. (Note: Cannot override variables)

Refer the skins section for more details.

Assets

Refers to various asset files within the assets directory.

assets/css/style.scss — Imports sass files from within the _sass directory and gets processed into the theme's stylesheet: assets/css/styles.css.
assets/minima-social-icons.html — Imports enabled social-media icon graphic and gets processed into a composite SVG file. Refer section on social networks for its usage.

Plugins

Minima comes with jekyll-seo-tag plugin preinstalled to make sure your website gets the most useful meta tags. See usage to know how to set it up.

Usage

Have the following line in your config file:

theme: minima

Customizing templates

To override the default structure and style of minima, simply create the concerned directory at the root of your site, copy the file you wish to customize to that directory, and then edit the file. e.g., to override the _includes/head.html file to specify a custom style path, create an _includes directory, copy _includes/head.html from minima gem folder to <yoursite>/_includes and start editing that file.

The site's default CSS has now moved to a new place within the gem itself, assets/css/style.scss.

In Minima 3.0, if you only need to customize the colors of the theme, refer to the subsequent section on skins. To have your CSS overrides in sync with upstream changes released in future versions, you can collect all your overrides for the Sass variables and mixins inside a sass file placed at _sass/minima/custom-variables.scss and all other overrides inside a sass file placed at path _sass/minima/custom-styles.scss.

You need not maintain entire partial(s) at the site's source just to override a few styles. However, your stylesheet's primary source (assets/css/style.scss) should contain the following:

Front matter dashes at the very beginning (can be empty).
Directive to import a skin.
Directive to import the base styles (automatically loads overrides when available).

Therefore, your assets/css/style.scss should contain the following at minimum:

---
---
@import
  "minima/skins/{{ site.minima.skin | default: 'classic' }}",
  "minima/initialize";

Skins

Minima 3.0 supports defining and switching between multiple color-palettes (or skins).

.
├── minima.scss
└── minima
    └── _syntax-highlighting.scss

A skin is a Sass file placed in the directory _sass/minima/skins and it defines the variable defaults related to the "color" aspect of the theme. It also embeds the Sass rules related to syntax-highlighting since that is primarily related to color and has to be adjusted in harmony with the current skin.

The default color palette for Minima is defined within _sass/minima/skins/classic.scss. To switch to another available skin, simply declare it in the site's config file. For example, to activate _sass/minima/skins/dark.scss as the skin, the setting would be:

minima:
  skin: dark

As part of the migration to support skins, some existing Sass variables have been retired and some have been redefined as summarized in the following table:

Minima 2.0	Minima 3.0
`$brand-color`	`$link-base-color`
`$grey-*`	`$brand-*`
`$orange-color`	has been removed

Available skins

Skin setting	Description
classic	Default, light color scheme.
dark	Dark variant of the classic skin.
auto	Adaptive skin based on the default classic and dark skins.
solarized	Adaptive skin for solarized color scheme skins.
solarized-light	Light variant of solarized color scheme.
solarized-dark	Dark variant of solarized color scheme.

💡 Adaptive skins switch between the "light" and "dark" variants based on the user's operating system setting or browser setting (via CSS Media Query prefers-color-scheme).

Customize navigation links

This allows you to set which pages you want to appear in the navigation area and configure order of the links.

For instance, to only link to the about and the portfolio page, add the following to your _config.yml:

minima:
  nav_pages:
    - about.md
    - portfolio.md