Minimal Mistakes layouts

The Jekyll theme Minimal Mistakes comes with more than a dozen prepared layouts. The differences between these layouts are described in the Minimal Mistakes documentation Layouts.

The recommendation from Michael Rose, the author of Minimal Mistakes, is to use the Layout single both for pages and posts.

Minimal Mistakes layouts

The template GitHub repository of the Jekyll Minimal Mistakes theme contains these layouts.

  • archive
  • archive-taxonomy
  • categories
  • category
  • collection
  • compress
  • default
  • home
  • posts
  • search
  • single
  • splash
  • tag
  • tags

The Minimal Mistakes documents explain the diffrences between these layouts. Below is a summary of the main types.

Archive layout

Essentially the same as single with markup adjustments and some modules removed. For details see Minimal Mistakes - Archive layouts.

Home page layout

A derivative archive page layout to be used as a simple home page. It is built to show a paginated list of recent posts based off of the pagination settings in _config.yml. The html root document for this entire site is built using the layout home. The bottom of that document lists the posts by default. For details the the Minimal Mistakes docs on home page layout.

Splash page layout

The splash layout generated full width pages without margins but three equally wide feature blocks. The Minimal Mistakes layout document contains a detailed section on Splash page layout. The next post in this blog is built using splash.

Search page layout

Search page layout is a page with a search form included by default as explained in the Minimal Mistakes section on Search page layout. A search layout document is typically a pages scope (rather than a post).

Front matter customisation

This section covers the layout customisations that can be done using keys in the front matter. By default the layout single, that we mostly have used so far, have the following front matter layout options:

# Top banner image (as in this post)
header:
  overlay_image: /assets/images/unsplash-image-1.jpg
  caption: "Photo credit: [**Unsplash**](https://unsplash.com)"
  actions:
    - label: "More Info"
      url: "https://unsplash.com"

# left column author profile (as in this post):
author_profile: boolean [true/false]

# left column Navigation bar
sidebar :
  nav: "'navbarname'"

# right column table of content layout:
toc : [true/false]
toc_label: string
toc_icon: path to icon
toc_sticky: [true/false] (true = stick to top of screen)

# Concatenation of central and right columns
# If combine dwith toc, toc is mobed to the top of the concatenated column
classes: wide

# comments module
comments: boolean [true/false]

# social media sharing
share: boolean [true/false]

# related posts
related: boolean [true/false]

# show date
show_date: boolean [true/false]

# read time
read_time: boolean [true/false]

# Disqus (I have to understand this to write anything)
???

The Minimal Mistakes default layout consists of a central main column with two sidebars; a left sidebar that can host author details and/or a customised navigation bar, and a right sidebar where a table of content can be added. The Minimal Mistakes layout documents include details about the Sidebars.

The right margin of the layout single is by default reserved for a table of content (see the post on pages in this site). You can free space for the main content (central column) by setting the key classes to wide in the front matter of the file you want customise:

classes: wide

If you have also requested a toc:

classes: wide
toc: true

The table of contents will appear in the new, concatenated, central column just after the title and any show_date or read_time.

The Minimal Mistakes documents include hints for how to create Custom head and footer.

Resources

Minimal Mistakes layouts

Minimal Mistakes cheat sheet