Hot on the heels of Jekyll v3.3.0 is a beta release of Minimal Mistakes… as a gemified theme.

minimal-mistakes-jekyll can only be used with Jekyll proper. If you’re hosting on GitHub Pages or using that gem the theme won’t work. 3rd party themes haven’t been white-listed so it’s a no go for now.

Fine with all that? Great. Let’s continue.

If you’re migrating a site already using Minimal Mistakes and haven’t customized any of the _includes, _layouts, _sass partials, or assets this should be quick and painless.

Step 1: Remove Theme Files

Remove _includes, _layouts, _sass, assets folders and files within. You won’t need these anymore as they’re bundled in the theme.

If you customized any of these then leave them alone and only remove the untouched ones. If setup correctly your modified versions should act as overrides to the versions bundled with the theme.

Step 2: Update Gemfile

Replace gem "github-pages or gem "jekyll" with gem "jekyll", "~> 3.3.0". You’ll need the latest version of Jekyll¹ for Minimal Mistakes to work and load all of the /assets/ properly.

Add the Minimal Mistakes theme gem:

gem "minimal-mistakes-jekyll"

When finished your Gemfile should look something like this:

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "jekyll", "~> 3.3.0"
gem "minimal-mistakes-jekyll"

Step 3: Run Bundler

Run bundle install (or bundle update if you’re updating an existing repo) to install/update Jekyll and the theme.

Step 4: Install the Theme

Add theme: "minimal-mistakes-jekyll" to your _config.yml file.

If you’re migrating from an existing Minimal Mistakes site you shouldn’t have to change anything else after this. If it’s a new site consult then docs to properly config.

Please Note: Paths for image headers, overlays, teasers, galleries, and feature rows have changed and now require a full path. Instead of just image: filename.jpg you’ll need to use the full path eg: image: assets/images/filename.jpg. The preferred location is now assets/images but can be placed elsewhere or external hosted. This all applies for image references in _config.yml and author.yml as well.

Step 5: jekyll new Tweaks

If this is a new site be sure to add the following files to _data/ and customize as you see fit. There is currently no way of bundling them in with the theme, so be sure to consult the docs on how to properly use both.

• _data/ui-text.yml - UI text documentation
• _data/navigation.yml - navigation documentation

You’ll also need to:

• Replace <site root>/index.html with a modified Minimal Mistakes index.html.
• Change layout: post in _posts/0000-00-00-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown to layout: single.
• Remove about.md, or at the very least change layout: page to layout: single and remove references to icon-github.html (or copy to your _includes if using).

That’s it! If all goes well running bundle exec jekyll serve should spin-up your site. If you encounter any bumps please file an issue on GitHub and make sure to indicate you’re testing the pre-release Ruby gem version.

File an issue

Thanks!