mere-blog-theme — Jekyll Blog Template

SHA-256: 6d3e5ef4aeca80681e2c58baa2b58a6b9250c45e4c20e5a309899867ab11c545

2026-10-02T10:45:23.170Z

# mere-blog-theme

[![Gem Version](https://badge.fury.io/rb/mere-blog-theme.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/rb/mere-blog-theme)
![Gem](https://img.shields.io/gem/dt/mere-blog-theme)

Mere is a minimal and simple blog theme, and nothing more, for use with Jekyll and GitHub Pages. It has been built with the Bulma frontend framework.

It has a homepage which displays the latest 6 posts and a paginated blog page used to list out all blog posts.

**Mere Blog Theme uses Jekyll 4.3 for compatibility with Bulma v1**

## Installation

Add this line to your Jekyll site's `Gemfile`:

```ruby
gem "mere-blog-theme"
```

And add this line to your Jekyll site's `_config.yml`:

```yaml
theme: mere-blog-theme
```

And then execute:

    $ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

    $ gem install mere-blog-theme

## Upgrading to v1

Version 1 of mere-blog-theme uses version 1 of Bulma. Bulma v1 has been updated to use dart sass and Jekyll was updated to use dart sass from version 4.3 and up, so this is now the minimum supported version of Jekyll for this theme.

The standard build for GitHub pages only works with Jekyll 3.9, so you will need to migrate to using a GitHub action to build and deploy your site.

Please read through the [Jekyll docs for GitHub Actions](https://jekyllrb.com/docs/continuous-integration/github-actions/) for more information.

## Usage

- [Blog Setup](#blog-setup)
- [Posts](#posts)
  - [Post Intro](#post-intro)
- [Homepage](#homepage)
- [Authors](#authors)
- [Google Analytics](#google-analytics)
- [Themes](#themes)

### Blog Setup

As of 0.4, the blog posts will be displayed on the homepage including pagination, instead of in a separate blog page.

**The homepage page needs to be called index.html for the blog pagination**

Set the paginator up in the `_config.yml` file with the posts per page and the path to the blog.

```yaml
paginate: 6
paginate_path: "/page:num"
```

### Posts

Posts should be created in the `_posts` directory as per standard Jekyll usage. The front matter should contain the layout of post, the image to use in the header and the homepage / blog page, the title of the post and the author of the post. You can also set a subtitle for the post if you want to.

```yaml
layout: post
title: First Post
image: /img/home.jpg
author: C.S. Rhymes
```

Wide images will work best, with a minimum width of 1400px.

#### Post Intro

Version 0.3 allows you to provide a intro and an intro image in your frontmatter. When creating your post add a short `intro` text an `intro_image` as a path to an image and then specify the `intro_image_ratio` which should be a [Bulma image](https://bulma.io/documentation/elements/image/) class.

```yaml
layout: post
title: Post with Intro
author: Guest Author
intro: This is the introduction text for this post. It appears large and bold at the top of the post
intro_image: /img/home.jpg
intro_image_ratio: is-16by9
```

Only the intro is required if you want to display it. If you don't want an image then don't specify one and just the intro text will display.

### Homepage

Finally, configure the homepage by creating an `index.html` page and configure the frontmatter with the layout of homepage, the title, subtitle (optional) and the image. You can set the hero_height to is-large if you want to make the homepage header a bit larger.

```yaml
layout: homepage
title: Mere Blog Theme
subtitle: This is the demo site for the Mere Blog Theme
image: /img/home.jpg
hero_height: is-large
```

### Authors

To enable the authors section, create a directory named `_authors` and create a page for each author within it. The author pages should have front matter in the following format.

**NOTE** The author name should match the author name in their posts exactly.

```yaml
layout: author
title: The authors page title
name: Author Name
position: Web Designer
description: The short description of the author
avatar: /img/avatar.png
website: https://www.csrhymes.com
```

The website and avatar are optional, but if you are stuck for author images, why not try [https://getavataaars.com](https://getavataaars.com). Square images work best. You can then write about the author in the page content.

Next, create an `authors.md` page in the root of your site and set the layout to authors.

```yaml
layout: authors
title: Authors
description: The authors page
```

Add authors as a collection in your `_config.yml` file with output set to true so the pages are generated.

```yaml
collections:
  authors:
    output: true
```

When you build your site, the authors link will appear in the navbar. The authors page will display the authors you have added. You can then click on their name or image to view the author page, along with a list of their 4 latest posts.

There will also be a link back to the authors page at the bottom of the post.

#### Author Social Profiles

**New in 0.2.1 **

You can add links to an author's social profile pages by adding the profile name and link to the front matter in the author's page (such as `_authors/chris.md`). The below social profiles are available.

```yaml
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
twitter: https://www.twitter.com/
github: https://www.github.com/
gitlab: https://www.gitlab.com
instagram: https://www.instagram.com
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/
medium: https://www.medium.com/
stack_overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/
```

### Google Analytics

To enable Google Analytics add `google_analytics: UA-xxxxxxxx` to your `_config.yml` replacing the UA-xxxxxxxx with your Google Analytics property.

### Themes

Bulma v1 has a concept of themes and [automatic dark mode](https://bulma.io/documentation/features/dark-mode/).

> Modern browsers come with a way to detect if a user has set their theme preference to light or dark by using the prefers-color-scheme keyword.

To disable this behaviour and force a theme, set the `force_theme:` in the \_config.yml to either 'dark' or 'light'.

```yaml
# _config.yml
force_theme: light
```

## Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/chrisrhymes/mere-blog-theme. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the [Contributor Covenant](http://contributor-covenant.org) code of conduct.

## Development

To set up your environment to develop this theme, run `bundle install`.

Your theme is setup just like a normal Jekyll site! To test your theme, run `bundle exec jekyll serve` and open your browser at `http://localhost:4000`. This starts a Jekyll server using your theme. Add pages, documents, data, etc. like normal to test your theme's contents. As you make modifications to your theme and to your content, your site will regenerate and you should see the changes in the browser after a refresh, just like normal.

When your theme is released, only the files in `_layouts`, `_includes`, `_sass` and `assets` tracked with Git will be bundled.
To add a custom directory to your theme-gem, please edit the regexp in `mere-blog-theme.gemspec` accordingly.

## License

The theme is available as open source under the terms of the [MIT License](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).