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Start a site with Chulapa

Choose an example and make it your own

Start with the GitHub template

For your first site, use Chulapa 101. It is an editable personal blog with publishing workflows already included. Explore the live starter before creating your repository.

The template includes three sample posts, a local photograph with alternative text and credit, About, archives by year, category and tag, Fuse.js search and RSS. Its home page lists recent posts with pagination. It uses the predefined gitdev skin without color or CSS overrides.

  1. Create your repository from the template.
  2. In Settings > Pages, choose GitHub Actions as the source.
  3. Edit _config.yml: set your title, description, author, repository (username/repository) and url (https://username.github.io). Commit your changes to main or master to trigger deployment.

The workflow sets the deployment base path. You do not need a personal access token or a local Ruby installation. Check Actions for build progress and Settings > Pages for your website address.

Edit index.html for the home page, _pages/about.md for About and _posts/ for your stories. Images go in assets/img/. Navigation, author details, footer links and the skin are configured in _config.yml. Keep the home page named index.html: Jekyll’s pagination plugin requires it. The default is five posts per page. The template is one ordinary site; it has no profile selector.

Its _config.yml follows the theme’s full configuration with commented options, including unused settings. Start with site details in section A; the rest of the blog is configured already. The template’s collections and defaults are adapted to a personal blog rather than the theme’s documentation site. Optional hooks are provided in _includes/custom/ for head tags, scripts and Giscus, alongside assets/css/custom.scss for CSS or SCSS. They contain comments only; the predefined skin is unchanged until you add your own styles. The template README also maps additional extension points for favicons, your JavaScript, custom skins, page front matter and local layout or include overrides.

See the template README for editing, image credits and optional local preview.

Explore minimal examples

Choose the example closest to your site. Each folder contains a Gemfile, _config.yml, a home page and sample content. They use existing Chulapa options; you can add search, comments and other features later.

Choose a starting point

Site What you get Preview Files
Personal blog A recent-post card index and a first story Blog demo Copy the files
Technical blog A post with code, diagrams, equations and a TOC Technical demo Copy the files
Portfolio A projects collection, card index and two project pages Portfolio demo Copy the files
Project A landing page with source and getting-started buttons Project demo Copy the files

These examples follow the theme’s default branch. Mermaid is available in the development version after v2.1.0 and is not in the v2.1.0 gem or pinned release. For reproducible theme updates, append an existing release tag to remote_theme. See installation for release and gem options.

Make it your own

  1. Copy the contents of one example folder into your own site repository. Keep _posts or _projects at the site root, alongside _config.yml.
  2. Edit title, description and repository. Set url to your site’s origin and baseurl to /repository for a project site or "" for a root site.
  3. Replace the sample content and placeholder links. A blog post goes in _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-title.md; a portfolio project goes in _projects/.
  4. Choose a skin or keep the example’s preset. The presets are journal, gitdev, lux and flatly, respectively.

You do not need to copy theme layouts, includes or assets. The remote theme supplies them during the build. The Gemfile includes the dependencies needed for a local build.

Preview locally

Install Ruby and Bundler, then run these commands from your copied site:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --url http://localhost:4000 --baseurl ""

Open http://localhost:4000. The local URL options leave your publication settings unchanged. Restart the server after changing _config.yml. Remote-theme downloads require network access.

Publish and extend

For a new site with a publishing workflow already included, start with the chulapa-101 template. Use the small examples above to explore layouts or copy their content into your site.

Follow the GitHub Actions deployment instructions. Copying an example alone does not configure hosting. These folders do not include a deployment workflow.

Once your content is in place, add search and comments, explore layouts and snippets or see sites using Chulapa. The portfolio example uses a collection index; it does not include filtering. The project example is a landing page; it does not add a documentation sidebar.