VoidyBootstrap

A Bootstrap 3 blog theme for the Pelican static site generator.

VoidyBootstrap is a theme that aims to be mobile friendly, responsive and easily customisable. It can be used in single column mode, or 2 column mode if the sidebar is enabled.

On larger screens, with the sidebar enabled, it provides a clean and responsive 2 column layout. At the top there's a navbar containing page links, and jumbotron area. The sidebar has category links and a tag-cloud. Font Awesome 4 is used for icons.

While the theme provides lots of customisation options, care has been taken to make it usable right out of the box with minimal configuration and sensible defaults -- albeit with the ubiquitous Bootstrap look and feel.

It's functional but deliberately minimal in terms of design. It can be used as is, or as a "clean slate" for creating custom Bootstrap-based websites -- where all the usual scaffolding and fiddly bits are taken care of, and all that remains is to provide a custom design on top of the Bootstrap base it provides.

The theme tries to accommodate common blogging needs and provide ways to easily accomplish common customisations.

Customised CSS, JavaScript and other modifications can be easily incorporated using configuration settings, and content can be added to the base layout by strategically adding template fragments (as opposed to modifying existing templates).

Installation

Clone this repo, then in your pelicanconf.py set the THEME variable to point to it:

THEME = 'path/to/voidy-bootstrap/'

Out of the box what you get is the stock standard Bootstrap 3 look and feel. To customise things see below.

Example Settings

All of these are optional, but here is a basic example of common variables that you might want to configure

The following should be set in pelicanconf.py:

SITESUBTITLE ='Sub-title that goes underneath site name in jumbotron.'
SITETAG = "Text that's displayed in the title on the home page."

# Extra stylesheets, for bootstrap overrides or additional styling.
STYLESHEET_FILES = ("pygment.css", "voidybootstrap.css",)

# Put taglist at end of articles, and use the default sharing button implementation.
CUSTOM_ARTICLE_FOOTERS = ("taglist.html", "sharing.html", )
CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_ARTICLE = "sharing_scripts.html"

SIDEBAR = "sidebar.html"

SOCIAL = (('Google+', 'http://plus.google.com/userid',
         'fa fa-google-plus-square fa-fw fa-lg'),
        ('Twitter', 'https://twitter.com/username', 
         'fa fa-twitter-square fa-fw fa-lg'),
        ('LinkedIn', 'http://linkedin-url', 
         'fa fa-linkedin-square fa-fw fa-lg'),
        ('BitBucket', 'http://bitbucket.org/username', 
         'fa fa-bitbucket-square fa-fw fa-lg'),
        ('GitHub', 'http://github.com/username',
         'fa fa-github-square fa-fw fa-lg'),
        )

The following are probably better suited for publishconf.py:

FEED_DOMAIN = SITEURL
FEED_ALL_ATOM = 'feeds/all.atom.xml'

DISQUS_SITENAME = "disqussitename"
GOOGLE_ANALYTICS = "UA-xxxxxxxxxx"
GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_SITEID = "gasiteid"
TWITTER_USERNAME = "twitterusername"

Basic Configuration and Customisation

By default all required CSS and JavaScript files are downloaded from CDNs. Intentionally little is supplied in the theme's static/css. Just a pygment.css file, and a sample css file (voidybootstrap.css) with very minimal styling is provided as a starting point.

The simplest way to customise things is to override the standard Bootstrap styles as necessary. The theme intentionally avoids loading any additional stylesheets by default, but this can easily be done by using the STYLESHEET_FILES setting. STYLESHEET_FILES is a list for specifying additional stylesheets that will be loaded by the base.html template after the main Bootstrap CSS file. Place any CSS stylesheet files you may require in the static/css directory and add the filenames to the STYLESHEET_FILES setting in pelicanconf.py

For example, if you've placed your own CSS styling in a stylesheet called custom.css (possibly using voidybootstrap.css as a starting point), then you would need something like this in your pelicanconf.py:

STYLESHEET_FILES = ("pygment.css", "custom.css",)

Custom Bootstrap

As an alternative, or in addition, it's possible to easily replace the standard Bootstrap file with a customised one. The MAIN_LOCAL_STYLESHEET setting is provided for this. If this variable is not set, a standard bootstrap.min.css will be used from a CDN.

To use a different (i.e. customised) Bootstrap stylesheet, set MAIN_LOCAL_STYLESHEET to the filename of a stylesheet to use instead.

This could be a customised Bootstrap stylesheet compiled manually from the Bootstrap Less files, or perhaps one obtained from an online source.

For example, you could use the Bootstrap customizer to create your own customised CSS file. Place that file in static/css and set MAIN_LOCAL_STYLESHEET to be the filename.

Similarly, a Bootswatch theme can be easily integrated. Select a theme and download the files. Place all the necessary CSS files in static/css. Set MAIN_LOCAL_STYLESHEET to the filename of the main Bootstrap CSS file, and specify any additional CSS files in the STYLESHEETS list.

Further Customisation

Like any other Pelican theme, you can just take the templates provided and modify them to your liking. However, if you're happy with the overall layout and just want to add/subtract things here are there, this theme provides "hooks" to do just that by simply setting specific variables in your pelicanconf.py and/or providing your own template fragments. For simple customisations, this can make is relatively straightforward to isolate modifications and easily keep up to date with any upstream changes.

These customisation "hooks" are settings that can be configured in pelicanconf.py to point to filenames of custom template fragments. These template fragments will either add or replace content in the default layout provided by the theme. For example, if pelicanconf.py contains the line:

CUSTOM_FOOTER = "custom/footer.html"

Then the bottom of every page will contain whatever is in the template file located at:

templates/includes/custom/footer.html

See the "Custom Includes" section below for details.

Note that for these template fragments must be relative to the theme's templates/includes/ directory.

Standard Settings

VoidyBootstrap honors the following standard Pelican settings:

SITEURL
SITENAME
SITESUBTITLE
LINKS
SOCIAL
TWITTER_USERNAME
FEED_DOMAIN
FEED_ALL_ATOM
FEED_ALL_RSS
DISQUS_SITENAME
GOOGLE_ANALYTICS

For the most part they should work as expected, although some may behave slightly differently than in the default Pelican theme (see next section).

Settings

This theme supports the following configuration settings. All are optional.

SITESUBTITLE: Sub-title -- displayed in jumbotron.
SITETAG: Text that will be placed in the title on the home page.
DEFAULT_METADESC: Default value for HTML meta description tag. Individual articles and pages can specify their own meta description by using the theme's custom description metadata tag.
MAIN_LOCAL_STYLESHEET: Local Bootstrap CSS file, as described above.
STYLESHEET_URLS: A list of URLS for additional stylesheets that should be pulled in by the base.html template, like CSS files from a CDN. Useful for adding the bootstrap theme CSS, for example.
STYLESHEET_FILES: An list of filenames (relative to the /theme/css/ directory) for additional stylesheets that should be pulled in by the base.html template (after any STYLESHEET_URLS entries).
SKIP_DEFAULT_CSS: No default CSS files at all will be used if this is set to True. In this case the only stylesheets used will be those specified in STYLESHEET_FILES and STYLESHEET_URLS. This setting is provided to give more control over which specific Bootstrap (and Font Awesome) CSS files are used (i.e. it allows a specific version to be configured through settings). But it means for things to work properly at a minimum the Bootstrap and Font Awesome need to be configured using the STYLESHEET* settings.
SKIP_DEFAULT_JS: Don't load any default JavaScript in the base template. If this is set to True, at a minimum jQuery and the Bootstrap JavaScript must be provided via JAVASCRIPT_FILES and/or JAVASCRIPT_URLS.
SKIP_DEFAULT_NAVIGATION: Don't display navbar at the top of the page. (If required a custom navigation template can be configured via CUSTOM_SITE_HEADERS.)
JAVASCRIPT_FILES and JAVASCRIPT_URLS: Similar to the STYLESHEET* settings, these allow arbitrary JavaScript files to be loaded. They will be referenced at the bottom of base.html, after any default script files.
ARCHIVES_URL: URL of archives page. Default is archives.html. If you're modifying ARCHIVES_SAVE_AS in your pelicanconf.py then you'll probably need to change this setting as well.
TWITTER_USERNAME: Set to a valid Twitter username to enable the twitter sharing button.
TWITTER_CARD: If set to True, Twitter Card meta-data will be added to article pages. If this is enabled, TWITTER_USERNAME must also be set.
OPEN_GRAPH: Set to True to enable Facebook Open Graph meta-properties.
OPEN_GRAPH_FB_APP_ID: Facebook App ID.
OPEN_GRAPH_ARTICLE_AUTHOR: Value for Open Graph article:author property, which will be set on article pages.
OPEN_GRAPH_IMAGE: Default value for Open Graph og:image property. Articles can use the custom social_image metadata tag to specify a per-article page value.

Sidebar Settings

As of version 1.1 of VoidyBootstrap, the sidebar is optional. To enable the default sidebar, add the following line to your pelicanconf.py:

SIDEBAR = "sidebar.html"

The "sidebar" area is probably something where everyone will want something different, so it isn't possible to create an implementation that will satisfy everyone all the time. However, there are things that commonly appear in sidebars (e.g author bio, categories, tag cloud, etc). So VoidyBootstrap includes a default sidebar template that provides a fairly typical sidebar implementation, with a few customisation settings so that common things can be added and configured via settings in pelicanconf.py (see below).

However, for those who might want something completely different in a sidebar, there is the ability to completely replace the default sidebar template with a custom implementation. Just create your own sidebar template (possibly using includes/sidebar.html as a starting point), and then set SIDEBAR to point to it. This will completely replaces the theme's default sidebar with whatever is in your custom sidebar template.

But for those happy enough to stick with the default sidebar, the following settings are available to customise it:

SOCIAL: Social media links to display in sidebar. This option is handled a bit differently than in the default theme. This should be a list/tuple where each element is a tuple with 3 elements: (name, URL, Font Awesome icon class). (See the "Example Settings" section above for an example.) The last element (icon class) can be omitted, in which case a generic icon will be used instead.
LINKS: Optional list of arbitrary links to display in sidebar. Each element must be a tuple with 2 elements: (link title, URL).
SIDEBAR_HIDE_CATEGORIES: A list of categories is displayed in the sidebar by default. Set this option to True to not this category list.
SIDEBAR_HIDE_TAGS: A tag cloud is displayed in the sidebar by default. Set this option to True to disable the tag cloud.
SIDEBAR_SIZE: The number of columns in the Bootstrap grid the sidebar should take up. The default is 3.

See also CUSTOM_SIDEBAR_TOP and CUSTOM_SIDEBAR_BOTTOM below.

Custom Includes

The following variables (all optional), if specified, should be set to paths for template fragments that will be included at strategic points from the primary templates. They will usually override existing sections of content. All paths must be relative to the theme's templates/includes directory.

CUSTOM_SITE_HEADERS: List of templates that will replace the default site header area (i.e. the jumbotron area).
CUSTOM_ARTICLE_HEADERS: List of templates that will replace the default article header provided in includes/article_header.html on article pages only.
CUSTOM_INDEX_ARTICLE_HEADERS: List of templates that will replace the default article article header provided in includes/article_header.html on index pages only.
CUSTOM_ARTICLE_PRECONTENT: Template fragment that will be inserted just before the start of the article body text, after any headers, image and standfirst.
CUSTOM_ARTICLE_PREFIX: Template fragment that will be inserted before the article headers .
CUSTOM_ARTICLE_FOOTERS and CUSTOM_PAGE_FOOTERS: List of templates that will included at the bottom of articles/pages, after the body text but before the comments. Can be used to configure any appropriate content, like sharing buttons, taglist, etc.
CUSTOM_HEADER_*: Add custom content after the site headers (before any content columns) based on page type, which can be: INDEX, ARTICLE, PAGE, CATEGORY, TAG, ARCHIVES.
CUSTOM_FOOTER: Footer template to be included by base.html. Anything here (e.g. copyright text) will appear between footer tags at the bottom of every page.
CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_ARTICLE and CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_PAGE and CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_ARCHIVE: Template fragment for any additional javascript code specific to articles, pages and archives respectively (useful for things like social media sharing code). Will be included at the bottom of pages, just before the closing body tag. Set to includes/sharing_scripts.html to use the default provided implementation.
CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_BASE: As above, but will be included on every page.
CUSTOM_INDEX_META: Included by index.html between the head tags. Can be used to add extra HTML meta tags to index pages, for example.
CUSTOM_SIDEBAR_TOP: Included by sidebar.html at the top of the sidebar. Provides a convenient place for an "about" blurb, for example.
CUSTOM_SIDEBAR_BOTTOM: Included by sidebar.html at the bottom of the sidebar.

Custom Metadata Tags

This theme supports the following (optional) custom metadata tags.

description: Can be used in pages and articles to provide a value for the HTML meta description tag, and social meta data (i.e. Open Graph).
standfirst: Text for a summary/intro paragraph that will be placed at the start of an article. This paragraph will be given a CSS class of "standfirst" so that additional styles can be applied.
social_image: Set to an image filename (relative to {{ SITEURL }}/images/) to provide a value for an article's og:image meta property.
image: Set to an image filename (relative to {{ SITEURL }}/images/) to display a (responsive) "featured image" at the top of an article, underneath any standfirst.
schema_type: Pages only. A schema.org itemtype for the page. Default is "WebPage".
javascript: Pages only. Filename of a JavaScript file (relative to theme/js/ directory) to load for this page.

Author

Robert Iwancz
www.voidynullness.net
@robulouski

Screenshot

License

Licensed under the MIT License

Feel free to use as-is or as a basis for your own custom theme.

xfgong / voidy-bootstrap