Steps for creating a new post.

  • Create a new file in the _posts folder called YYYY-MM-DD-post-name.md, where YYYY is the year (2023), MM numeric month (01-12), and DD is the numeric day of the month (01-31). The post-name is a short name for the new post with - between words. You must use this name convention for all new posts.

  • Make the YML heading. All pages in the site need to start with a YML heading. For posts you should use the following header: 
    ---
layout: post
title:  "Post Name"
author: Your name
description: Short yet informative description
image: /assets/images/blog-image.jpg
---

  • For this theme, the layout should stay as post. All the other fields should be updated with the information for your particular blog post. The blog image should be a .jpg or .png file that you should add to the folder assets/images. Don’t make it too large or the page will take longer to load (500-800 KB is a good size). Leave the file path as /assets/images/ in the header area.

  • Write the body of the blog using markdown. There are a lot of references for markdown available. I like the Markdown Guide because many of the examples show both the markdown and the html code. There are separate pages for basic syntax, extended syntax, and a cheatsheet for quick reference.

  • You can also use html code snippets along with the markdown. Often, using html will give you a little more control and flexibility as demonstrated below.

To create a link (internal or external), enclose the link text in brackets (e.g., [Statistics Department]) and then follow it immediately with the URL in parentheses (e.g., (https://statistics.byu.edu)).

For example:

My favorite department at BYU is the [Statistics Department](https://statistics.byu.edu).

My favorite department at BYU is the Statistics Department

If you want external links to open in a separate window, you will need to use html code with target="_blank" inside the a tag.

For example:

My favorite department at BYU is the <a href="https:statistics.byu.edu" target="_blank">Statistics Department</a>

My favorite department at BYU is the Statistics Department

If you want to have a link that points to another location on your site or if you want to include a file (such as an image or video) you must use the site.url and site.baseurl variables when making the link reference. For example, this link to pointing to the About page is coded as:

[About]({{site.url}}/{{site.baseurl}}/about)

Paths to files should also be referenced with the site.url and site.baseurl variables (see the section on Adding Images).

Adding Images

In the examples below, if your image ends with .png or .JPEG, use the appropriate extension instead of .jpg.

Images for the blog will generally but put into the assets/images folder. (You can also create a subfolder for images, but you will need to include the subfolder name in the reference link.)

Markdown syntax for including images is ![Fig Name](path/to/image). For example:

![Figure]({{site.url}}/{{site.baseurl}}/assets/images/image_name.jpg)

Figure

Resizing images

The image I added in the previous section seems a bit large for this post. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good way to resize images with markdown, so if you need to resize an image, use html instead of markdown and specify the width in the style parameter as follows:

<img src="{{site.url}}/{{site.baseurl}}/assets/images/image_name.jpg" alt="" style="width:300px;"/>

(Example with width set to 300 pixels)

(Example with width set to 100 pixels)

Troubleshooting

Here are some things to keep in mind if your blog appearance isn’t going as you planned:

Problem: The blog post that I created isn’t appearing

Possible Solutions:

  • Check your date. GitHub pages won’t display blog posts with future dates
  • Check the yaml header. If there are any special characters in any of the fields, you need to use quotes around the entire field entry. The most common culprit is the description. If you’re having trouble, try putting quotes around the entire description

Problem: I know that I made changes to a blog post but the changes aren’t appearing

Possible Solution:

  • Check the header. If there are any special characters in any of the fields, you need to use quotes around the entire field entry. The most common culprit is the description. If you’re having trouble, try putting quotes around the entire description.

Problem: My entire blog has weird formatting

Possible Solution:

  • Usually this is an address problem. Double check your url and baseurl in the _config file