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Importance of Navigation in Website UX Navigation menus are critical to guiding visitors through your website. A well-designed menu improves engagement, reduces bounce rates, and helps users find information quickly. Jekyll, being a static site generator, allows flexible customization of navigation through layouts, includes, and data files. Basic Navigation Setup in Jekyll At the simplest level, a navigation menu can be hardcoded in a layout or include file: Home About Blog Contact This approach works for small sites but quickly becomes cumbersome as pages grow. Using Data Files for Dynamic Menus Store menu items in a _data/navigation.yml file: - title: "Home" url: "/" - title: "About" url: "/about/" - title: "Services" url: "/services/" children: - title: "SEO" url: "/services/seo/" - title: "Content Marketing" url: "/...

Introduction to Data-Driven Content in Jekyll Jekyll is traditionally a static site generator, but its ability to consume data files allows you to inject dynamic content at build time. Using YAML, JSON, or CSV data files stored in the _data directory, you can create templates that pull from structured data sources, greatly enhancing content maintainability and flexibility. Why Use Data Files in Jekyll? Centralized Content Management: Manage repetitive or related content in a single file. Consistency: Avoid duplicate content entry by referencing a common data source. Scalability: Easily add or update items without touching template code. SEO Benefits: Structured data can improve semantic markup and search appearance. Setting Up Data Files Create a _data folder in your Jekyll site root. Add YAML ( .yml ), JSON ( .json ), or CSV ( .csv ) files. For example: _data/products.yml Example content for products.yml : - name: "SEO Audit Service" pri...

Navigation breadcrumbs are an essential UX feature that helps visitors understand their current location within a website’s structure and easily navigate back to previous pages. For static site generators like Jekyll, implementing breadcrumbs effectively can boost usability and reduce bounce rates. Why Customize Breadcrumbs? Improved User Navigation: Customized breadcrumbs can reflect your site’s hierarchy accurately, making navigation intuitive. Better SEO: Search engines appreciate structured navigation, which can enhance site indexing. Consistent Branding: Styling breadcrumbs to match your site’s design improves visual coherence. Case Study: How Custom Breadcrumbs Improved User Engagement In a recent project, a tech blog implemented tailored breadcrumbs on their Jekyll site. Before customization, users reported difficulties in tracing back their navigation path, leading to increased exit rates on category pages. After deploying a breadcrumb system that dynam...

Why Customize Pagination in Jekyll Pagination plays a crucial role in how visitors navigate through your blog posts. Default pagination often lacks flexibility and UX polish. Customizing pagination improves site usability by providing clearer navigation cues and faster access to content, which can decrease bounce rates and increase page views. Goals for Custom Pagination Make navigation intuitive and easy to use Keep the design consistent with your blog’s theme Ensure responsiveness across all devices Improve SEO with semantic markup Step 1: Understanding Default Jekyll Pagination Jekyll uses the jekyll-paginate plugin by default, which generates simple numbered page links. However, this default setup is minimalistic and may not offer the best user experience or visual appeal. Step 2: Creating a Custom Pagination Layout To build a better pagination system, create a custom pagination include file: {% raw %} {% if paginator.previous_page %} ← Previous ...

Introduction to Client-Side Search Customization Adding a customized search feature on your Jekyll-powered GitHub Pages site improves user experience by allowing visitors to quickly find relevant content without page reloads. This guide walks you through tailoring the client-side search to suit the Mediumish template design. Key Objectives Integrate a lightweight JavaScript search engine Match search UI style with Mediumish aesthetics Ensure fast indexing of posts for real-time results Step 1: Setting Up the Search Index Use Jekyll's build process to create a JSON index of posts. Add the following snippet in your _layouts/default.html or a dedicated partial: {% raw %} {% endraw %} Step 2: Implementing the Search Input and Results Container Add a search input box and results container in your sidebar or header: Step 3: JavaScript for Real-Time Filtering Use a simple JavaScript function to filter posts from the JSON index as users type: docu...

What Is a Reading Dashboard? A reading dashboard offers users a personalized overview of their reading history, progress through post series, and suggestions on what to read next. This feature is common in large content platforms but rarely seen on static blogs — especially those built with Jekyll. In this guide, you'll learn how to build one from scratch using only client-side tools. Why It Matters for Static Blogs Since Jekyll is a static site generator, implementing user-specific features like dashboards can seem out of scope. But with creative use of localStorage , JavaScript, and well-structured front matter, we can simulate dynamic, personalized behavior entirely in the browser. Design Goals for the Dashboard No backend or server-side database Lightweight and privacy-respecting Client-only logic using localStorage Data pulled from existing Jekyll collections or posts Easy to integrate into any Jekyll theme (especially Mediumish) Step 1: Recording Re...

Why Track Post Series Navigation? After building contextual navigation between posts in a series, the next step is understanding how readers engage with that flow: Are they completing the entire series? Do they drop off at a particular part? Which parts are revisited? Traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics may feel like overkill or may not offer fine-grained, privacy-friendly insights. Let's explore a lightweight, backend-free approach tailored for Jekyll sites. Step 1: Use localStorage to Track Progress The simplest method is to record which parts a user has read using localStorage . Here’s a JavaScript snippet you can include in your layout: <script> (function() { const key = 'jekyll_series_progress'; const series = "{{ page.series.name | escape }}"; const part = "{{ page.series.part }}"; if (series && part) { let progress = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem(key) || '{}'); if (!progr...