Really Simple

Really Simple is a really simple Jekyll theme. It is barebones and is meant to get a blogging site up very quickly. The Really Simple design is basic yet aesthetically pleasing. In other words it's good enough for an MVP allowing the author to quickly publish content without worrying about the details.

Screenshot of customized colors

There are no bells and no whistles. Those can be added later -- when the author is ready.

Preview the theme to see what it looks like.

Usage

This Really Simple Jekyll theme is a gem.

In your Gemfile add the line:

 gem 'really-simple'

In your _config.yml file specify the theme:

theme: really-simple

And then execute:

$ bundle

Now create or update your archives.md in the project root folder. Specify the archives layout:

---
layout: archives
---

Any content in this file will be included in the page.

Alternately you can simply fork this repo and go from there.

Customization

Configuration

The following settings are configurable in _config.yml:

Title - Title of your site. This is used in the header and footer.
Post Limit - The number of posts to show on the home page. Link to archives in the header and at the end of the home page will only display based on this setting. When this is not specified, Really Simple defaults the limit to 3.

Here's an example:

title: Really Simple # Title of site.
post_limit: 3  # Number of posts to display on the home page.

Colors

The color palette can be changed and configured by changing the rgb in _sass/_colors.scss. If using the gem, merely create the file _colors.scss under the folder _sass and set the colors appropriately. Here's an example:

$header-text-color: #ee4035;
$content-text-color: #333;
$footer-text-color: #ee4035;

$post-link-color: #7bc043;
$normal-link-color: #0392cf;
$hover-link-color: #f37736;

$table-border-color: #eee;
$blockquote-txt-color: #999;
$blockquote-border-color: #fdf498;
$code-bg-color: #fdf498;

The above will render the palette like so:

Screenshot of customized colors

Details

Link to archives in the header and at the end of the home page will only display when there are more than post limit configured (or the default of 3 if it is not configured).
The header has two links: Archives and About. Really Simple expects these files to be in the root project folder. The jekyll new command will create a dummy about.md file in the root folder. Remove the layout metadata so that the Really Simple default template is used.

Philosophy

The Really Simple theme is meant to be minimal and be a design starting point. It follows the following principles:

It should work out of the box without additional configuration.
It should be lightweight. No external dependencies on CSS or JS frameworks.
It should be responsive.

Background

I had been struggling to find a really simple Jekyll theme that supported blogging out of the box. It was either esthetically not pleasing to me or that it had too many bells and whistles forcing me to think about things I did not wish to have to think about immediately. I just wanted to launch.

While flying from Los Angeles (LAX) to San Diego (SAN) our flight was refused landing due to fog. We had to turn back to LAX. After landing back in LAX, Delta booked a bus to drive us to SAN instead. It was late, I couldn't sleep. I was inspired to create and I had time to burn.

So, I hacked this together during the two hour bus ride.

Contributions

Bug reports and pull requests are most welcome.

License

Available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.