Open Project theme by Ribose

Open Project is a theme for Jekyll oriented towards presenting open efforts such as open-source software and specifications in a navigable and elegant way.

Open Project fits two types of sites: that describe one individual project, and that combine projects into sort of an open hub.

See also: CI_OPS for how to set up automated build and deployment of the site to AWS S3.

Creating a site: how to
Describing open projects: Project data structure
Customizing site looks:
Layouts
Includes

Starting a site with this theme

Getting started with Ruby

If you aren’t using Ruby often, the recommended way to install it is with RVM. Refer to RVM docs and use it to install a fresh Ruby version.

The currently recommended version is 2.4.4, it’s known to not work under 2.3 and it hasn’t been tested on newer versions.

Start new Jekyll site

jekyll new my-open-site

Installing theme

Add this line to your Jekyll site's Gemfile, replacing default theme requirement:

gem "jekyll-theme-open-project"

(Jekyll’s default theme was “minima” at the time of this writing.)

Also in the Gemfile, add two important plugins to the :jekyll_plugins group. (The SEO tag plugin is not mandatory, but these docs assume you use it.)

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem "jekyll-seo-tag"
  gem "jekyll-data"
  gem "jekyll-theme-open-project-helpers"
  # ...other plugins, if you use any
end

Execute the following to install dependencies:

$ bundle

Configuring site

Edit _config.yml to add necessary site-wide configuration options, and add files and folders to site contents. This step depends on the type of site you’re creating: hub or individual project site.

Further sections explain core concepts of open project and hub, and go into detail about how to configure a project or hub site.

Building site

Execute to build the site locally and watch for changes:

$ bundle exec jekyll serve --host mysite.local --port 4000

This assumes you have mysite.local mapped in your hosts file, otherwise omit --host and it’ll use “localhost” as domain name.

Universal setup

These settings apply to both site types (hub and project).

You may want to remove the default about.md page added by Jekyll, as this theme does not account for its existence.
Add hero_include: home-hero.html to YAML frontmatter in your main index.md.
Add following items to site’s _config.yml (and don’t forget to remove default theme requirement there):

  title: Site title
  description: Site description
  # The above two are used by jekyll-seo-tag for things such as
  # `<title>` and `<meta>` tags, as well as elsewhere by the theme.

  tagline: Site tagline
  pitch: Site pitch
  # The above two are used on home hero unit.

  social:
    links:
      - https://twitter.com/<orgname>
      - https://github.com/<orgname>

  legal:
    name: Full Organization Name
    tos_link: https://www.example.com/tos
    privacy_policy_link: https://www.example.com/privacy

  # These are required for the theme to work:

  theme: jekyll-theme-open-project
  permalink: /blog/:month-:day-:year/:title/

Logo

By “logo” is meant the combination of site symbol as a graphic and name as word(s).

Symbol is basically an icon for the site. Should look OK in dimensions of 30x30px, and fit inside a square. Should be in SVG format (see also the SVG guidelines section).

Drop your site-wide symbol in /assets/symbol.svg.

Site name displayed to the right of the symbol. Limit the name to 1-3 words.

Drop a file called title.html in the root of your site. In its contents you can go as simple as {{ site.name }} and as complex as a custom SVG shape.

Note that it must look good when placed inside ~30px tall container. In case of SVG, SVG guidelines apply.

Do not create custom CSS rules for .site-logo descendants: this may cause issues when one site’s logo is used in context of another site of the same hub. You can use inline styling, though.

Blog

Project sites and hub site can have a blog.

In case of the hub, blog index will show combined timeline from hub blog and projects’ blogs.

Index

Create blog index page as _pages/blog.html, with nothing but frontmatter. Use layout called "blog-index", pass hero_include: index-page-hero.html, and set title and description as appropriate for blog index page.

Example:

---
title: Blog
description: >-
  Get the latest announcements and technical how-to’s
  about our software and projects.
layout: blog-index
hero_include: index-page-hero.html
---

Posts

In general, posts are authored as per usual Jekyll setup.

It is recommended that you provide explicit hand-crafted post excerpts, as automatically-generated excerpts may break post card markup.

Theme also anticipates author information within frontmatter. Together with excerpts, here’s how post frontmatter (in addition to anything already required by Jekyll) looks like:

---
excerpt: >-
  Post excerpt goes here, and supports inline formatting only.

author:
  email: <author’s email; associated Gravatar will be shown>
  name: <author’s full name>
  social_links:
    - https://twitter.com/username
    - https://facebook.com/username
    - https://linkedin.com/in/username
---

For hub-wide posts, put posts under _posts/ in site root and name files e.g. 2018-04-20-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown (no change from the usual Jekyll setup).

For project posts, see below about shared project data structure.

Hub site

The hub represents your company or department, links to all projects and offers a software and specification index.

Additional items allowed/expected in _config.yml:

is_hub: true

# Since a hub would typically represent an organization as opposed
# to individual, this would make sense:
seo:
  type: Organization

Project, spec and software data

See the section about project data structure.

When used within hub site (only), each project subdirectory must contain a file "index.md" with frontmatter like this:

title: Sample Awesome Project

description: >-
  A sentence or two go here.

# Whether the project is included in featured three projects on hub home page
featured: true | false

site:
  git_repo_url: <Git URL to standalone project site source repo>
home_url: <URL to standalone project site>

# Note: Avoid whitespaces and other characters that may make Jekyll
# percent-encode the tag in URLs. Replace " " (a regular space)
# with "_" (underline); underlines will be rewritten as spaces when tags
# are presented to site users.
tags: [Ruby, Python, RFC]

Project index page

Create software index in _pages/projects.html, with nothing but frontmatter. Use layout called "project-index", pass hero_include: index-page-hero.html, and set title and description as appropriate.

Example:

---
title: Open projects
description: Projecting goodness into the world!
layout: project-index
hero_include: index-page-hero.html
---

Software index page

Create software index in _pages/software.html, with nothing but frontmatter. Use layout called "software-index", pass hero_include: index-page-hero.html, and set title and description as appropriate.

Example:

---
title: Software
description: Open-source software developed with MyCompany’s cooperation.
layout: software-index
hero_include: index-page-hero.html
---

Specification index page

Create spec index in _pages/specs.html, with nothing but frontmatter. Use layout called "spec-index", pass hero_include: index-page-hero.html, and set title and description as appropriate.

Example:

---
title: Specifications
description: Because specifications are cool!
layout: spec-index
hero_include: index-page-hero.html
---

Project site

When project is set up as a standalone site, _config.yml should include site-wide title that is the same as project name.

Additional items allowed/expected in _config.yml:

authors:
  - name: Your Name
    email: [email protected]

author: "Company or Individual Name Goes Here"

# Any given open project site is assumed to be part of a hub,
# and hub details in this format are required to let project site
# reference the hub.
parent_hub:
  git_repo_url: [email protected]:path/to-repo.git
  home_url: https://www.example.com/

File layout is the same as described in the section about shared project data structure, with _software, _specs, _posts, assets subdirectories found in the root of your Jekyll site.

Describing a project: shared data structure

Each project is expected to have a machine-readable and unique name, a title, a description, a symbol, and one or more software products and/or specs.

Following data structure is shared and used to describe projects, whether on hub home site or each individual project site:

- <project-name>/
  - _posts/
    - 2038-02-31-blog-post-title.markdown
  - assets/
    - symbol.svg
  - _software/
    - <name>.md
    - <name>/
      - assets/
        - symbol.svg
  - _specs/
    - <name>.md

Blog

Author project site blog posts as described in the universal setup section.

Software and specs

An open project serves as an umbrella for related software products and/or specifications.

Each product or spec is described by its own .md file with frontmatter, placed under _software/ or _specs/ subdirectory, respectively, of your open project’s Jekyll site.

A software product additionally is required to have a symbol in SVG format, placed in /assets/symbol.svg within _software/ directory.

YAML frontmatter that is expected with both software and specs:

title: A Few Words
# Shown to the user
# and used for HTML metadata if jekyll-seo-tag is enabled

description: A sentence.
# Not necessarily shown to the user,
# but used for HTML metadata if jekyll-seo-tag is enabled

tags: [Python, Ruby]

feature_with_priority: 1
# With this key, software or spec will be featured on home
# page of project site. Lower number means higher priority
# (as in, priority no. 1 means topmost item on home page,
# as long as there aren’t others with the same value).
# If no documents in the collection have this key,
# items on home will be ordered according to Jekyll’s
# default behavior.

Software product

YAML frontmatter required for software:

repo_url: https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-rfc
docs:
  git_repo_url: [email protected]:path/to-repo.git
  git_repo_subtree: docs

About the docs key in this frontmatter, see nearby section about documentation.

Specification

YAML frontmatter specific to specs:

rfc_id: XXXX
# IETF RFC URL would be in the form 
# http://ietf.org/html/rfc<id>

ietf_datatracker_id: some-string-identifier-here
ietf_datatracker_ver: "01"
# IETF datatracker URL would be in the form
# https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/<id>[-<version>]

source_url: https://example.com/spec-source-markup

Documentation for specs and software

Documentation contents for software should be kept in software package’s own repository, under a directory such as docs/. Inside that directory, place a file called navigation.md containing only frontmatter, in format like this:

sections:
- name: Introduction
  items:
    - overview
    - installation
- name: Usage
  items:
    - basic

In the same directory, place the required document pages—in this case, overview.md, installation.md, and basic.md. Each document page is required to contain standard YAML frontmatter with at least title specified.

During project site build, Jekyll will pull docs for software products that are hosted under that project site.

Symbol

Should look OK in dimensions of about 30x30, 60x60px. Must fit in a square. Should be in SVG format (see also the SVG guidelines section). Place the symbol in assets/symbol.svg within project directory.

SVG guidelines

Ensure SVG markup does not use IDs. It may appear multiple times on the page hence IDs would fail markup validation.
Ensure root
You can style SVG shapes using in site’s assets/css/style.scss.

Content guidelines

Project, software, spec title: 1-3 words, capital case
Project, software, spec description: about 12 words, no markup
Project description (featured): about 20-24 words, no markup
Blog post title: 3–7 words
Blog post excerpt: about 20–24 words, no markup

Theme includes

Commonly used overridable includes are (paths relative to your site root):

title.html: Site name in case you want to provide custom typography, possibly as SVG.
project-nav.html (currently project sites only): Additional links in project site’s top navigation, if needed.
assets/symbol.svg: Site-wide symbol is used as an include to facilitate path fill color overrides via CSS rules.

Include location gotcha

Theme configuration adds includes_dir: . to your site. This means when Jekyll encounters {% include <include_name> %} in a template, it looks first in <site root>/<include_name>, and then in <theme root>/_includes/<include_name>. Consequently, you put your include overrides directly in site root, not inside _includes/ directory of your side.

Theme layouts

Normally you don’t need to specify layouts manually, except where instructed in site setup sections of this document.

Commonly used layouts are:

blog-index: Blog index page. Pages using this layout are recommended to supply hero_include.
post: Blog post
project-index: Open project index page (hub site only). Suggested to supply hero_include. Will show a list of open projects across the hub.
software-index: Software index page (hub site only). Suggested to supply hero_include. Will show a list of software across projects within the hub.
spec-index: Specification index page (hub site only). Suggested to supply hero_include. Will show a list of specs across projects within the hub.
product: Software product (project site only)
spec: Open specification (project site only)

Page frontmatter

Typical expected page frontmatter is title and description. Those are also used by jekyll-seo-tag plugin to add the appropriate meta tags.

Commonly supported in page frontmatter is the hero_include option, which would show hero unit underneath top header. Currently, theme supports _includes/index-page-hero.html as the only value you can pass for hero_include (or you can leave hero_include out altogether).

Style customization

To customize site appearance, create a file in your Jekyll site under assets/css/style.scss with following exact contents:

---
---
// Font imports can go here

// Variable redefinitions can go here

@import 'jekyll-theme-open-project';

// Custom rules can go here

There are two aspects to theme customization:

Cutomize SASS variables before the import (such as colors)
Define custom style rules after the import

Custom rules

One suggested custom rule would be to change the fill color for SVG paths used for your custom site symbol to white, unless it’s white by default.

The rule would look like this:

.site-logo svg path {
  fill: white;
}

SASS variables

Following are the variables along with their defaults:

$font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !default;

# Primary color—should be bright but dark enough to be readable,
# since some text elements are set using this color:
$primary-color: lightblue !default;

# Darker variation of primary color used for background on elements where
# text is set in white:
$primary-dark-color: navy !default;

# Bright color for accent elements, such as buttons (not yet in use).
# Text on those elements is set in bold and white, so this color
# should be dark enough:
$accent-color: red !default;

# Below are used for `background` CSS rule for top header, and for
# hero unit respectively. Gradients can be supplied.
$header-background: $primary-dark-color !default;
$hero-background: $primary-dark-color !default;

# This is for the big big hero unit on home page.
$superhero-background: $primary-dark-color !default;

# Below customize colors for different sections of the site.
$hub-software--primary-color: lightsalmon !default;
$hub-software--primary-dark-color: tomato !default;
$hub-software--hero-background: $hub-software--primary-dark-color !default;

$hub-specs--primary-color: lightpink !default;
$hub-specs--primary-dark-color: palevioletred !default;
$hub-specs--hero-background: $hub-specs--primary-dark-color !default;

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/riboseinc/jekyll-theme-open-project.

This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

Theme development

Generally, this directory is setup like a Jekyll site. To set it up, run bundle install.

To experiment with this code, add content (projects, software, specs) and run bundle exec jekyll serve. This starts a Jekyll server using this theme at http://localhost:4000.

Put your layouts in _layouts, your includes in _includes, your sass files in _sass and any other assets in assets.

Add pages, documents, data, etc. like normal to test your theme's contents.

As you make modifications to your theme and to your content, your site will regenerate and you should see the changes in the browser after a refresh, like normal.

When your theme is released, only files specified with gemspec file will be included. If you modify theme to add more directories that need to be included in the gem, edit regexp in the gemspec.

Building and releasing

Manual test during development

While working on a site using this Jekyll theme, you can use local theme copy, and thus test the theme before release. The sequence would be as follows:

Change Gemfile to point to local theme copy.

For example, change from gem "jekyll-theme-open-project", "~> 1.0.6" to gem "jekyll-theme-open-project", :path => "../jekyll-theme-open-project"

Run bundle exec jekyll serve.
Make changes to theme and reload site (it may not reload automatically).
Release theme — see below.
(To bump the site to this latest version, change Gemfile back, bump theme dependency version to the one just released, run bundle --full-index to update lockfile properly, and your site is ready to go.)

Releasing

Update .gemspec file with the new version and commit the change.

Build new gem version and push it to rubygems.org with:

./develop/release

Testing with build script (TBD)

May not work at the moment — see #26. Please use the other test option.

To check your theme, run:

./develop/build

It’ll build Jekyll site and run some checks, like HTML markup validation.

License

The theme is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Open Project theme by Ribose

Contents

Starting a site with this theme

Getting started with Ruby

Start new Jekyll site

Installing theme

Configuring site

Building site

Universal setup

Logo

Blog

Index

Posts

Hub site

Project, spec and software data

Project index page

Software index page

Specification index page

Project site

Describing a project: shared data structure

Blog

Software and specs

Software product

Specification

Documentation for specs and software

Symbol

SVG guidelines

Content guidelines

Theme includes

Include location gotcha

Theme layouts

Page frontmatter

Style customization

Custom rules

SASS variables

Contributing

Theme development

Building and releasing

Manual test during development

Releasing

Testing with build script (TBD)

License