Today’s the day! We’re excited to update to Jekyll 3.2, which brings over 100 improvements including Gem-based themes.
In addition to themes, we’re extremely happy to introduce support for third-party Jekyll plugins. Sites on the new Team, Business, and Enterprise plans can now install and leverage custom plugins to extend the functionality of Jekyll and Siteleaf. As always, GitHub Pages-approved plugins are supported on all other plans.
Sites on the free developer plan can make use of the new GitHub Pages-approved Minima theme, while all paid plans (including legacy and Personal plans) can take full advantage of custom themes. Themes package layouts, includes, and stylesheets in a way that can be overridden by your site’s content. It is a great way to maintain a separation of content and code, and makes it possible to share themes across multiple sites.
We also gave the Jekyll build process a nice speed boost across the board. In some cases, you may notice your site building up to 2x as fast!
How it works
When previewing or publishing your site, Siteleaf will now look for an optional Gemfile and install any custom Gem-based themes and plugins prior to building. If you’re writing your own plugins, you can also include custom Ruby code in the _plugins directory as outlined in the Jekyll docs.
Custom plugins are supported even when publishing to GitHub Pages. Just make sure to choose the “Compiled by Siteleaf” format in your hosting settings, and Siteleaf will pre-compile your site before pushing it to GitHub.
See our docs for full instructions on using themes and plugins.
Try it out
Interested in trying custom plugins but haven’t yet upgraded to the Team (or higher) plan yet? Get in touch and we’d be happy to give you a demo.