Jekyll Basics For Child Sites

The minimum Jekyll concepts needed to edit an unaltraweb site safely.

unaltraweb sites are normal Jekyll sites with a reusable theme gem. You do not need to edit the theme to edit content.

Front Matter

Every page starts with YAML front matter:

---
title: Projects
layout: page
lang: en
permalink: /en/projects/
profiles: [unaltreselfie]
feature: projects
---

Collections

Collections are folders whose entries are rendered by layouts:

  • _projects/ for project cards and project pages.
  • _outputs/ for research outputs.
  • _books/ for readings.
  • _chapters/ for manuals.
  • _documentation/ for documentation pages.

Theme Resolution

Jekyll looks in the child repository first and then in the unaltraweb gem. This lets a site override a layout intentionally, but normal sites should avoid copying core files.

Static Build Rule

Normal builds should not fetch external APIs. Metrics, diagrams and PDF previews are generated by explicit commands before the site build.