How to prevent CNAME file from getting dropped during Jekyll build process - jekyll

I'm using Jekyll with Forestry.io and GitHub Pages. Everything seems to be working properly except for when the build process runs and the site is copied to the gh-pages branch. All of the static files (eg. robots.txt and sitemap.xml) get copied, but the CNAME file for my custom domain does not.
If I change the file name to all lowercase (cname) then it gets copied. But GitHub Pages doesn't recognize a cname file.
I don't think anything in the build portion of the Forestry.io settings would cause this issue.
build:
preview_command: bundle exec jekyll build --drafts --unpublished --future -d _site
publish_command: bundle exec jekyll build -d _site
preview_env:
- JEKYLL_ENV=staging
publish_env:
- JEKYLL_ENV=production
preview_output_directory: _site
output_directory: _site

Are you publishing your build to Github Pages? Github Pages can/should contain the (Jekyll) source, not the build. So to be extra clear: Github Pages should contain .md files and not (built) .html files. The CNAME file is designed to be used by Github Pages, so Github Pages is not the culprit. Forestry.io or your build process probably is. Forget about the build process and publish your changes directly to your github pages branch. That should do the trick.

Related

Is there an easy way to make Jekyll output files to a docs/ directory?

I'm using Jekyll to build a Github pages site, and have run into a sort of silly issue.
Github recommends Jekyll for Github pages, so I sort of assumed it would just work; however, it does not.
Jekyll by default builds all files to the _site/ directory, which is really nice and looks fancy and so on, but is not an option for Github pages.
Github seems to offer only three options for hosting:
Root of master Branch
docs/ Folder of Master Branch
gh-pages Branch
So, pray tell, why can I not build Jekyll to either A. a branch with a custom name or B. a folder named docs/ instead of _site?
Turns out I didn't read enough docs.
The solution is to add a tag to the _config.yaml file in the root of the project.
This line will switch from using _site to docs/ for build output:
destination: docs/
Alternately, you can pass this as an environmental variable like so:
jekyll build --destination docs/

Jekyll Website won't load

I've been trying for a while to get a Jekyll website running on Github Pages, but it doesn't seem to work. I've been getting the error
Your site is having problems building: The symbolic link
/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/ffi-1.9.18/ext/ffi_c/libffi-x86_64-linux-gnu/include/ffitarget.h
targets a file which does not exist within your site's repository. For
more information, see
https://help.github.com/articles/page-build-failed-symlink-does-not-exist-within-your-site-s-repository/.
I have already tried it with 9 different Jekyll themes, but none of them seem to work, so I'm clearly doing something wrong. Here are the steps that I am taking
1) Create a new repo and put the files from a Jekyll Theme there, OR fork it from another repo (e.g. https://github.com/iwiedenm/jekyll-theme-massively-src)
2) Git pull it into my computer and make sure I'm on the gh-pages branch
3) Run bundle install --path vendor/bundle
4) Make sure it was built with bundle exec jekyll serve
5) Once it looks good, upload it into Github
git add *
git commit -m 'Test'
git push
Then I go to the repo in the browser and I see the error above, and I can't see the website because of that missing "ffitarget.h" file. When I go look for it in that directory, I am able to find it, but Github doesn't seem to be able to find it.
Nick Shu
PS: Feel free to mark this as a duplicate. I have seen other pages, such as this and I tried it, but it didn't work.
Github page will use local gems in vendor. If you commit them, you will have errors each time github pages tries to resolve symbolic links.
From a fresh repository
Add vendor/** in your .gitignore file before you do a git add . *.
The dot in git add . * forces git to stage dotfiles (.gitignore, ...).
From an already existing repository containing gems in a vendor folder
Add vendor/** in your .gitignore file,
Remove vendor/ files from versioning, git rm --cached -r vendor/
You can now stage, commit and push
git add . *
git commit -m 'remove vendor from versioning'
git push origin master`
Notes :
you can publish master branch content, as gh-pages branch is no more mandatory. See documentation.
unless you have special needs like debuging, it's not necessary to download gems for each of your project. You can just do a bundle install.
Ensure the vendor/bundle/ directory has been excluded..
By default, Jekyll excludes that directory and therefore, it would not care about the contents in your vendor directory..
When you fork/clone a repo, there's a possibility that the exclude: list has been customized (therefore overriding the default setting). You can ensure vendor/bundle/ is ignored by Jekyll by adding it to your custom exclude list:
# Exclude list
exclude:
- README.md
- Gemfile
- Gemfile.lock
- node_modules
- gulpfile.js
- package.json
- _site
- src
- vendor
- CNAME
- LICENSE
- Rakefile
- old
- vendor/bundle/
To locally emulate how the site is built on GitHub Pages, you can build using the --safe switch:
bundle exec jekyll serve --safe

Jekyll copying md files instead of processing them

I have a directory full of markdown (.md) files I want to render into a website so I can see what it will look like. I installed Jekyll which I've used a number of times, cd'd into the directory and executed Jekyll serve.
Jekyll created the _site directory and instead of processing my .md files into .html files, it just copied them into the _site directory.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to why it's not processing the markdown. Anyone know why?
Jekyll only processes files with Front Matter.. otherwise, those files are designated as "static files" and simply copied verbatim to the destination directory.

Can I change Jekyll's temp directory?

Can I change the directory Jekyll uses for it's temporary building?
I'm using Jekyll on a gh-pages branch and when I switch back to my Ember project on master, it puts new files in /tmp. This causes problems with Jekyll's build, and forces me to delete the dir each time I switch back to gh-pages.
Yes, you can.
You have a few ways of doing this, in your local folder, where _config.yml is located (Jekyll site root directory):
A. Editing _config.yml to have a destination for site generation:
In _config.yml, add the following:
destination: /tmp/jekyll_site/
This will tell jekyll you want temporary sites generated in the /tmp/jekyll_site folder.
B. Passing the destination via terminal
jekyll serve -d /tmp/jekyll_site/
OR jekyll serve -destination /tmp/jekyll_site/
This flag will have Jekyll generate files in the specified folder.
More information on the configuration options and flags used by Jekyll can be found here in the documentation. :)

Locally building and pushing jekyll site to github pages

I am using the gem "jekyll-assets" on my site and it fails when pushing to github pages. I have read that a way around this is to build the site locally, which builds just fine, and then push it to github pages. The examples of people doing this, however, are using a project repository and they are pushing the site to a "gh-pages" branch. I am doing this site for myself and the setup for this suggests using the master branch under the repo .github.io. How do I push a local jekyl build to a site with this setup?
You need to push only the content of the _site folder. Nothing else, nor the folder itself.
If you are setting up a project site, push the content to the gh-pages branch. If it's your user website, the repo must be named username.github.io and your site root needs to be the master branch.
Let me know how it goes! :)
Hope to have helped!
Here a windows batch file that pushes generated files back to github. Name it site_publish.bat and put it into the root of your project.
#echo off
cd /d "%~dp0"
rmdir _site /s /q
call jekyll build
git --git-dir=.git --work-tree=_site add --all
git --git-dir=.git --work-tree=_site commit -m "autogen: update site"
git --git-dir=.git --work-tree=_site push
You may want to try jgd command line, which automates all the steps suggested by other answers, in one simple call:
$ jgd
The site will be packaged and then deployed to the gh-pages branch of your repo, provided you have all permissions configured. More about it in this blog post of mine: Deploy Jekyll to GitHub Pages