Jekyll default installation doesn't have _layouts directory

Question

So I followed the guide on the Jekyll website by installing and running Jekyll (sure I don't have to post this here). And the site is up and running perfectly but for some reason I don't see the _layouts directory that's supposed to be there. In the pages I can see that it references some layouts i.e:

index.html

---
layout: default
---

<div class="home">

about.md

---
layout: page
title: About
permalink: /about/
---

This is the base Jekyll theme.

But when you look at the directory stucture of the project:

No layouts folder.. what's up with that? Everything works though. And it looks perfectly fine when run on localhost.

Solution 1

You must be running the recent Jekyll version 3.2, which introduces Gem based themes (from https://jekyllrb.com/docs/themes/):

Jekyll themes package layouts, includes, and stylesheets in a way that can be overridden by your site’s content.

The theme is set in _config.yml:

theme: minima

Initial files that were previously in _layouts, _includes, and _sass are now packaged with the theme.

Solution 2

Basically Jekyll wants you to use themes, so you can't see _layouts, _includes, _sass, _assets anymore.

To use previous behaviour simply copy from the gemfile:

open $(bundle show minima)

Copy the 4 folders into your jekyll directory

Solution 3

If you want the older style of Jekyll website directory which includes all the 4 folders then you can use this command : jekyll new my-new-website-name --blank I have done the same while creating a personal site.

Comments

[Admin]

Perfect! Thank you very much :)

[Toontje]

Is there a way to add a new Jekyll 3.2 website withouth the minima theme?

[Ross]

Yes, just remove the theme: minima line from your _config.yml. You could copy the theme files to your site as well if you wanted to keep the starting point: github.com/jekyll/minima

[bozdoz]

Is there any automatic way to do this? i.e. without downloading from github?

[Ross]

You could copy the files from where bundle installs them instead. I've been using an older version of Jekyll to generate new sites: jekyll _3.0.3_ new . (assuming macOS with Jekyll 3.0.3 installed).

[zachdyer]

I don't see the themes folder for minima.

[Ross]

@zachdyer I'm not sure what you mean. If you're still having issues it's probably better to ask in a new question.

[zachdyer]

I guess I didn't have the minima theme installed. However I solved the problems I was having by deleting the gem files and adding the _layouts folder and other Jekyll folders to the root directory. Then it started working just fine.

[Nic Aguirre]

So if I want to build off of the minima theme, say adding a header.html include, how would I go about doing this? Would I have to make a new theme entirely?

[Samuel]

Interesting. Should I delete files in minima?

[Jeremy Lynch]

You don't have to delete files in minima. The files in your project directory are preferentially used

[Greconomist]

or you can use open $(bundle show minima) to access the minima files directly (works from mac terminals).

[Yashu Mittal]

Getting this message in terminal: bash: open: command not found

[Finn]

@YashuMittal On Ubuntu/Linux, try xdg-open $(bundle show minima).

[michael_teter]

To clarify then, if one wants to make additions or modifications to their layouts, they must either manually create folders and copy files from somewhere under _site, or they must modify a gem and maintain a custom gem? If so, both options seem quite user-unfriendly. A step or two more in that direction and we might as well just hand-code a site like we used to.

[agent18]

This just seems to initiate the some directories. The default theme which we can edit is not present here.