About the template

This is a bare-minimum template to create a Jekyll site that uses the Just the Docs theme. You can easily set the created site to be published on GitHub Pages – the README file explains how to do that, along with other details.

If Jekyll is installed on your computer, you can also build and preview the created site locally. This lets you test changes before committing them, and avoids waiting for GitHub Pages.1 And you will be able to deploy your local build to a different platform than GitHub Pages.

More specifically, the created site:

  • Uses a gem-based approach, i.e. uses a Gemfile and loads the just-the-docs gem
  • Uses the GitHub Pages / Actions workflow to build and publish the site on GitHub Pages

Other than that, you’re free to customize sites that you create with this template, however you like. You can easily change the versions of just-the-docs and Jekyll it uses, as well as adding further plugins.

Browse our documentation to learn more about how to use this theme.

To get started with creating a site, simply:

  1. Click “use this template” to create a GitHub repository
  2. Go to Settings > Pages > Build and deployment > Source, and select GitHub Actions

If you want to maintain your docs in the docs directory of an existing project repo, see Hosting your docs from an existing project repo in the template README.

Building and previewing your site locally

Assuming Jekyll and Bundler are installed on your computer:

  • Change your working directory to the root directory of your site.
  • Run bundle install.
  • Run bundle exec jekyll serve to build your site and preview it at localhost:4000.

The built site is stored in the directory _site.

Publishing your site on GitHub Pages

  1. If your created site is YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-SITE-NAME, update _config.yml to: 
     title: YOUR TITLE
 description: YOUR DESCRIPTION
 theme: just-the-docs

 url: https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/YOUR-SITE-NAME

 # remove if you don't want this link to appear on your pages
 aux_links:
     Template Repository: https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-SITE-NAME

  2. Push your updated _config.yml to your site on GitHub.

  3. In your newly created repo on GitHub:
    • Go to the Settings tab -> Pages -> Build and deployment, then select Source: GitHub Actions.
    • If there were any failed Actions, go to the Actions tab and click on Re-run jobs.

Publishing your built site on a different platform

Just upload all the files in the directory _site.

  1. It can take up to 10 minutes for changes to your site to publish after you push the changes to GitHub. ↩