static-website-template

A Jekyll template for a small, fast, self-contained static site: monospace layout, no webfont CDN, no analytics, no cookies. Clone it, run setup.sh with your details, and you have a working site with local preview and one-command deploy.

The theme is a vendored fork of minima — every layout, include and stylesheet lives in this repo, so there is no gem whose markup you cannot read.

prerequisites

• Ruby ≥ 3.1 — the pinned version is in .ruby-version (3.2.5). With rbenv:

  rbenv install "$(cat .ruby-version)"
  

• Bundler — gem install bundler

• rsync and ssh — for deploying (both ship with macOS)

• a Unix shell — setup.sh, serve.sh and deploy.sh are bash. macOS and Linux work as-is; on Windows use WSL.

setup.sh checks all of this before it changes anything.

setup

git clone <this-repo> mysite
cd mysite
./setup.sh --name        mysite \
           --author      "Your Name" \
           --mail        you@example.com \
           --url         https://mysite.example.com \
           --server      my-server \
           --server-path /var/www/mysite

Run ./setup.sh with no arguments to be prompted for each value instead, or ./setup.sh --dry-run to see exactly what would change without touching anything. ./setup.sh --help lists every flag.

flag	meaning	example
--name	site title	mysite
--author	author name	Your Name
--mail	contact address	you@example.com
--url	base URL, no trailing slash	https://mysite.example.com
--server	ssh host or ~/.ssh/config alias	my-server
--server-path	absolute docroot on the server	/var/www/mysite
--baseurl	optional subpath, if not at the domain root	/blog
--ssh-key	optional identity file; blank uses the ssh agent	~/.ssh/id_rsa

setup.sh then:

1. validates every value before writing anything — including the same docroot guards deploy.sh uses, so a typo in --server-path fails here rather than during an rsync --delete against a live server
2. substitutes the __SITE_*__ placeholders in _config.yml
3. writes deploy.conf (gitignored) for deploy.sh
4. replaces this README with a short one for your site
5. deletes SETUP.md and itself
6. removes the origin remote, so you cannot push your site into the template
7. runs bundle install

It refuses to run a second time.

local preview

./serve.sh              # http://127.0.0.1:4000, opens a browser, livereload
./serve.sh 4001         # a different port

Press Enter or Ctrl-C to stop. _config.yml is not reloaded while the server runs — restart after editing it.

deploy

./deploy.sh -n          # dry run: show what would transfer, change nothing
./deploy.sh             # preview the changes, then confirm
./deploy.sh -y          # no prompt
./deploy.sh --no-build  # upload the existing _site/ as-is

It builds, then mirrors _site/ to the server with rsync --delete. Before transferring anything it refuses to proceed if the target is a system directory, if the path has fewer than three segments (the shape an empty variable collapses to), or if the build output is missing or has no index.html. After a successful transfer it checks that URL returns HTTP 200.

Settings come from deploy.conf, which setup.sh writes and .gitignore excludes:

TARGET="my-server:/var/www/mysite"
SSH_KEY=""                          # blank = ssh agent / ~/.ssh/config
URL="https://mysite.example.com"

writing

• posts — _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-title.md, front matter layout: post. Posts dated in the future stay unpublished (future: false).

• pages — markdown files in the project root with layout: page and a permalink. Add them to header_pages in _config.yml to show them in the nav, in that order.

• assets — anything in assets/. Reference it through relative_url so it survives a move to a subpath:

  ![alt]({% raw %}{{ "/assets/example.svg" | relative_url }}{% endraw %})
  

_posts/2026-07-27-example-post.md demonstrates every styled element — headings, lists, tables, code, blockquotes, footnotes, images, video embeds. Keep it while you set things up, then delete it.

structure

_config.yml              site identity + build settings; single source
                         of truth, read via {{ site.title }} etc.
_layouts/
  default.html           page skeleton
  home.html              front page: recent posts + OLDER POSTS list
  page.html              standalone pages
  post.html              blog posts
_includes/
  head.html              meta, seo tag, stylesheet, favicons
  header.html            site title + nav
  footer.html            contact + url
_sass/
  _variables.scss        every themeable value, all !default
  _mixins.scss           media-query, relative-font-size
  _fonts.scss            @font-face for the self-hosted typeface
  minima.scss            theme entry point
  minima/                base, layout, syntax-highlighting
assets/
  main.scss              compiles to /assets/main.css
  fonts/                 JetBrains Mono woff2 + OFL licence
_posts/                  YYYY-MM-DD-title.md
index.md  about.md  privacy-policy.md  404.html
setup.sh  serve.sh  deploy.sh

customising the look

Every visual value is a !default variable in _sass/_variables.scss. Override them from assets/main.scss without editing the theme:

@use "minima" with (
  $brand-color:   #c00,
  $content-width: 960px,
);

privacy

The template ships with no cookies, no analytics and no third-party requests. The typeface is self-hosted from assets/fonts/ (SIL OFL 1.1) rather than loaded from a font CDN, so no visitor IP reaches anyone else. privacy-policy.md states this, and pulls the controller's name and address from _config.yml — keep them consistent if you change how the site is hosted.

licence

The vendored theme derives from minima, MIT-licensed. JetBrains Mono is under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (assets/fonts/OFL.txt).