The Minimill project template is the best way to build static sites fast. With one command, build a static page using Gulp, Jekyll, and SCSS.

Other Versions: ES6, Minimill internal

• Install the project in just three commands (see "Developing" below).
• Use Jekyll for content management and templating.
• Use ImageMagick to resize images for responsive / retina loading.
• Use SCSS to keep our CSS organized into logical components.
• Use Autoprefixer to automatically insert browser prefixes where necessary to handle cross browser compatibility.
• Use Browsersync to automatically launch a development version of our website, reload the page whenever we change the HTML, and inject changes to CSS, JavaScript, and images with needing to reload.
• Use HTML Minifier, CSSNano, UglifyJS, and ImageMin to compress and optimize our HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images, respectively.
• Use SCSS-Lint, JSHint, and JSCS to perform linting and style checking on our SCSS and JavaScript files.

All with one command from the terminal:

gulp serve

Install npm. Then, install gulp:

npm install -g gulp  # May require `sudo`

Finally, install ImageMagick. You have done so successfully if you can run

convert -help

without any errors.

npm install            # One time
gem install scss_lint  # One time
gulp responsive        # Each time you add images to _img/res/raw
gulp serve

Because Gulp and Jekyll to not play nice historically, static assets need to be generated into two different folders:

• SCSS source files live in _scss/ and compile to both css/ and _site/css/
• JavaScript source files live in _js/ and compile to both js/ and _site/js/
• Images in _img/ compile to both img/ and _site/img/

Note: the root level css/, js/, and img/ folders are in the .gitignore and are regularly deleted. Modifications to these folders may be lost without warning! Instead, edit source files in the corresponding underscore-prefixed folders.

This workflow allows you to use progressive, responsive images with ease. This means that with a single line of code, you can include an image that both loads with a blur-into-focus placeholder and loads an appropriately sized image for your device.

1. Place images that you wish to resize into the /_img/res/raw folder.

2. To resize them, run

   gulp responsive

   This will create subdirectories within the /_img/res/ folder with resized images in each. By default, it creates the folders 20/, 400/, 800/, and 1600/, with images resized to those heights in pixels in each one. Then, these images will be copied into /_site/img/res/<size> for static access. In addition, data about these images (filename / aspect ratio pairs, and generated sizes) is generated into /_data/responsiveMetatdata.json.

3. Use the Jeyll include to insert your image!

   {% include resimg.html src="example-image.jpg" %}

4. (Optional) Use the included image viewer by adding the class with-viewer:

   {% include resimg.html src="example-image.jpg" class="with-viewer" %}

5. (Optional) Customize what size images are generated by changing the responsiveSizes variable at the top of Gulpfile.js.

Note: By default, responsive resizing is not included in the gulp serve command, as it can be very computationally expensive. This can be enabled by uncommenting ['responsive'] in the images and images:optimized tasks.

Note: By default, generated images and /_data/responsiveMetadata.json are included in the .gitignore.

If you want to use this repo for your next project, make sure to make the following changes:

1. Edit _config.yml, filling in the HTML metadata associated with your site.
2. Edit package.json providing a name, version, description, license, and repository.url.
3. Remove the .git folder, so that you start from a fresh commit history.
4. Edit LICENSE.md and README.md to your preference.
5. Remove .gitkeep files that are placeholders for your content.

An overview of Gulp commands available:

Builds the site into the dist directory. This includes:

• SCSS w/ linting, sourcemaps and autoprefixing
• JS linting and uglification
• Image optimization and resizing

This is used for distributing an optimized version of the site (for deployment). It includes everything from gulp build as well as:

• SCSS minification
• CSS / JS inline-sourcing
• more rigorous image optimization

Resizes images in the _img/res/raw directory into _img/res/<size> directories, for several different heights in pixels (default: 20, 400, 800, 1600).

Watchs for changes in local files and rebuilds parts of the site as necessary, into the dist directory.

Runs gulp watch in the background, and serves the dist directory at localhost:3000 with automatic reloading using Browsersync.

├── _img/             # All images that will be hosted statically.
    └── res/          # Responsive images
        ├── 20/       # 20px tall images
        ├── 400/      # 400px tall images
        ├── ...       # ...
        └── raw/      # Full size images
├── _includes/        # Jekyll HTML includes
├── _js/              # JavaScript libraries and scripts, pre-compilation
├── _layouts/         # Jekyll HTML layouts
├── _posts/           # Jekyll HTML/Markdown posts
├── _scss/            # Stylesheets, pre-compliation
├── _site/            # GENERATED Jekyll builds the site into this directory
├── css/              # GENERATED Gulp builds SCSS into this directory
├── js/               # GENERATED Gulp builds JS into this directory
├── img/              # GENERATED Gulp builds images into this directory
├── node_modules/     # GENERATED NPM installs JS modules here.
├── _config.yml       # Metadata associated with the site.
├── Gulpfile.js       # Controls Gulp, used for building the website
├── index.html        # The root HTML file for the website
├── LICENSE.md        # This project's license
├── package.json      # Dependencies
└── README.md         # This file