--- title: Configuration permalink: /docs/configuration/ --- Jekyll allows you to concoct your sites in any way you can dream up, and it’s thanks to the powerful and flexible configuration options that this is possible. These options can either be specified in a `_config.yml` file placed in your site’s root directory, or can be specified as flags for the `jekyll` executable in the terminal. ## Configuration Settings ### Global Configuration The table below lists the available settings for Jekyll, and the various options (specified in the configuration file) and flags (specified on the command-line) that control them.
Setting Options and Flags

Site Source

Change the directory where Jekyll will read files

source: DIR

-s, --source DIR

Site Destination

Change the directory where Jekyll will write files

destination: DIR

-d, --destination DIR

Safe

Disable custom plugins, and ignore symbolic links.

safe: BOOL

--safe

Exclude

Exclude directories and/or files from the conversion. These exclusions are relative to the site's source directory and cannot be outside the source directory.

exclude: [DIR, FILE, ...]

Include

Force inclusion of directories and/or files in the conversion. .htaccess is a good example since dotfiles are excluded by default.

include: [DIR, FILE, ...]

Keep files

When clobbering the site destination, keep the selected files. Useful for files that are not generated by jekyll; e.g. files or assets that are generated by your build tool. The paths are relative to the destination.

keep_files: [DIR, FILE, ...]

Time Zone

Set the time zone for site generation. This sets the TZ environment variable, which Ruby uses to handle time and date creation and manipulation. Any entry from the IANA Time Zone Database is valid, e.g. America/New_York. A list of all available values can be found here. When serving on a local machine, the default time zone is set by your operating system. But when served on a remote host/server, the default time zone depends on the server's setting or location.

timezone: TIMEZONE

Encoding

Set the encoding of files by name (only available for Ruby 1.9 or later). The default value is utf-8 starting in 2.0.0, and nil before 2.0.0, which will yield the Ruby default of ASCII-8BIT. Available encodings can be shown by the command ruby -e 'puts Encoding::list.join("\n")'.

encoding: ENCODING

Defaults

Set defaults for YAML Front Matter variables.

see below
Destination folders are cleaned on site builds

The contents of <destination> are automatically cleaned, by default, when the site is built. Files or folders that are not created by your site will be removed. Some files could be retained by specifying them within the <keep_files> configuration directive.

Do not use an important location for <destination>; instead, use it as a staging area and copy files from there to your web server.

### Build Command Options
Setting Options and Flags

Regeneration

Enable auto-regeneration of the site when files are modified.

-w, --[no-]watch

Configuration

Specify config files instead of using _config.yml automatically. Settings in later files override settings in earlier files.

--config FILE1[,FILE2,...]

Drafts

Process and render draft posts.

show_drafts: BOOL

--drafts

Environment

Use a specific environment value in the build.

JEKYLL_ENV=production

Future

Publish posts or collection documents with a future date.

future: BOOL

--future

Unpublished

Render posts that were marked as unpublished.

unpublished: BOOL

--unpublished

LSI

Produce an index for related posts. Requires the classifier-reborn plugin.

lsi: BOOL

--lsi

Limit Posts

Limit the number of posts to parse and publish.

limit_posts: NUM

--limit_posts NUM

Force polling

Force watch to use polling.

--force_polling

Verbose output

Print verbose output.

-V, --verbose

Silence Output

Silence the normal output from Jekyll during a build

-q, --quiet

Incremental build

Enable the experimental incremental build feature. Incremental build only re-builds posts and pages that have changed, resulting in significant performance improvements for large sites, but may also break site generation in certain cases.

incremental: BOOL

-I, --incremental

Liquid profiler

Generate a Liquid rendering profile to help you identify performance bottlenecks.

profile: BOOL

--profile

Strict Front Matter

Cause a build to fail if there is a YAML syntax error in a page's front matter.

strict_front_matter: BOOL

--strict_front_matter
### Serve Command Options In addition to the options below, the `serve` sub-command can accept any of the options for the `build` sub-command, which are then applied to the site build which occurs right before your site is served.
Setting Options and Flags

Local Server Port

Listen on the given port.

port: PORT

--port PORT

Local Server Hostname

Listen at the given hostname.

host: HOSTNAME

--host HOSTNAME

Base URL

Serve the website from the given base URL

baseurl: URL

--baseurl URL

Detach

Detach the server from the terminal

detach: BOOL

-B, --detach

Skips the initial site build.

Skips the initial site build which occurs before the server is started.

--skip-initial-build

X.509 (SSL) Private Key

SSL Private Key.

--ssl-key

X.509 (SSL) Certificate

SSL Public certificate.

--ssl-cert
Do not use tabs in configuration files

This will either lead to parsing errors, or Jekyll will revert to the default settings. Use spaces instead.

## Custom WEBrick Headers You can provide custom headers for your site by adding them to `_config.yml` ```yaml # File: _config.yml webrick: headers: My-Header: My-Value My-Other-Header: My-Other-Value ``` ### Defaults We provide by default `Content-Type` and `Cache-Control` response headers: one dynamic in order to specify the nature of the data being served, the other static in order to disable caching so that you don't have to fight with Chrome's aggressive caching when you are in development mode. ## Specifying a Jekyll environment at build time In the build (or serve) arguments, you can specify a Jekyll environment and value. The build will then apply this value in any conditional statements in your content. For example, suppose you set this conditional statement in your code: ```liquid {% raw %} {% if jekyll.environment == "production" %} {% include disqus.html %} {% endif %} {% endraw %} ``` When you build your Jekyll site, the content inside the `if` statement won't be run unless you also specify a `production` environment in the build command, like this: ```sh JEKYLL_ENV=production jekyll build ``` Specifying an environment value allows you to make certain content available only within specific environments. The default value for `JEKYLL_ENV` is `development`. Therefore if you omit `JEKYLL_ENV` from the build arguments, the default value will be `JEKYLL_ENV=development`. Any content inside `{% raw %}{% if jekyll.environment == "development" %}{% endraw %}` tags will automatically appear in the build. Your environment values can be anything you want (not just `development` or `production`). Some elements you might want to hide in development environments include Disqus comment forms or Google Analytics. Conversely, you might want to expose an "Edit me in GitHub" button in a development environment but not include it in production environments. By specifying the option in the build command, you avoid having to change values in your configuration files when moving from one environment to another. ## Front Matter defaults Using [YAML Front Matter](../frontmatter/) is one way that you can specify configuration in the pages and posts for your site. Setting things like a default layout, or customizing the title, or specifying a more precise date/time for the post can all be added to your page or post front matter. Often times, you will find that you are repeating a lot of configuration options. Setting the same layout in each file, adding the same category - or categories - to a post, etc. You can even add custom variables like author names, which might be the same for the majority of posts on your blog. Instead of repeating this configuration each time you create a new post or page, Jekyll provides a way to set these defaults in the site configuration. To do this, you can specify site-wide defaults using the `defaults` key in the `_config.yml` file in your project's root directory. The `defaults` key holds an array of scope/values pairs that define what defaults should be set for a particular file path, and optionally, a file type in that path. Let's say that you want to add a default layout to all pages and posts in your site. You would add this to your `_config.yml` file: ```yaml defaults: - scope: path: "" # an empty string here means all files in the project values: layout: "default" ```
Please stop and rerun `jekyll serve` command.

The _config.yml master configuration file contains global configurations and variable definitions that are read once at execution time. Changes made to _config.yml during automatic regeneration are not loaded until the next execution.

Note Data Files are included and reloaded during automatic regeneration.

Here, we are scoping the `values` to any file that exists in the path `scope`. Since the path is set as an empty string, it will apply to **all files** in your project. You probably don't want to set a layout on every file in your project - like css files, for example - so you can also specify a `type` value under the `scope` key. ```yaml defaults: - scope: path: "" # an empty string here means all files in the project type: "posts" # previously `post` in Jekyll 2.2. values: layout: "default" ``` Now, this will only set the layout for files where the type is `posts`. The different types that are available to you are `pages`, `posts`, `drafts` or any collection in your site. While `type` is optional, you must specify a value for `path` when creating a `scope/values` pair. As mentioned earlier, you can set multiple scope/values pairs for `defaults`. ```yaml defaults: - scope: path: "" type: "pages" values: layout: "my-site" - scope: path: "projects" type: "pages" # previously `page` in Jekyll 2.2. values: layout: "project" # overrides previous default layout author: "Mr. Hyde" ``` With these defaults, all pages would use the `my-site` layout. Any html files that exist in the `projects/` folder will use the `project` layout, if it exists. Those files will also have the `page.author` [liquid variable](../variables/) set to `Mr. Hyde`. ```yaml collections: my_collection: output: true defaults: - scope: path: "" type: "my_collection" # a collection in your site, in plural form values: layout: "default" ``` In this example, the `layout` is set to `default` inside the [collection](../collections/) with the name `my_collection`. ### Glob patterns in Front Matter defaults It is also possible to use glob patterns (currently limited to patterns that contain `*`) when matching defaults. For example, it is possible to set specific layout for each `special-page.html` in any subfolder of `section` folder. {%- include docs_version_badge.html version="3.7.0" -%} ```yaml collections: my_collection: output: true defaults: - scope: path: "section/*/special-page.html" values: layout: "specific-layout" ```
Globbing and Performance

Please note that globbing a path is known to have a negative effect on performance and is currently not optimized, especially on Windows. Globbing a path will increase your build times in proportion to the size of the associated collection directory.

### Precedence Jekyll will apply all of the configuration settings you specify in the `defaults` section of your `_config.yml` file. However, you can choose to override settings from other scope/values pair by specifying a more specific path for the scope. You can see that in the second to last example above. First, we set the default page layout to `my-site`. Then, using a more specific path, we set the default layout for pages in the `projects/` path to `project`. This can be done with any value that you would set in the page or post front matter. Finally, if you set defaults in the site configuration by adding a `defaults` section to your `_config.yml` file, you can override those settings in a post or page file. All you need to do is specify the settings in the post or page front matter. For example: ```yaml # In _config.yml ... defaults: - scope: path: "projects" type: "pages" values: layout: "project" author: "Mr. Hyde" category: "project" ... ``` ```yaml # In projects/foo_project.md --- author: "John Smith" layout: "foobar" --- The post text goes here... ``` The `projects/foo_project.md` would have the `layout` set to `foobar` instead of `project` and the `author` set to `John Smith` instead of `Mr. Hyde` when the site is built. ## Default Configuration Jekyll runs with the following configuration options by default. Alternative settings for these options can be explicitly specified in the configuration file or on the command-line.
There are two unsupported kramdown options

Please note that both remove_block_html_tags and remove_span_html_tags are currently unsupported in Jekyll due to the fact that they are not included within the kramdown HTML converter.

```yaml # Where things are source: . destination: ./_site collections_dir: . plugins_dir: _plugins layouts_dir: _layouts data_dir: _data includes_dir: _includes collections: posts: output: true # Handling Reading safe: false include: [".htaccess"] exclude: ["Gemfile", "Gemfile.lock", "node_modules", "vendor/bundle/", "vendor/cache/", "vendor/gems/", "vendor/ruby/"] keep_files: [".git", ".svn"] encoding: "utf-8" markdown_ext: "markdown,mkdown,mkdn,mkd,md" strict_front_matter: false # Filtering Content show_drafts: null limit_posts: 0 future: false unpublished: false # Plugins whitelist: [] plugins: [] # Conversion markdown: kramdown highlighter: rouge lsi: false excerpt_separator: "\n\n" incremental: false # Serving detach: false port: 4000 host: 127.0.0.1 baseurl: "" # does not include hostname show_dir_listing: false # Outputting permalink: date paginate_path: /page:num timezone: null quiet: false verbose: false defaults: [] liquid: error_mode: warn strict_filters: false strict_variables: false # Markdown Processors kramdown: auto_ids: true entity_output: as_char toc_levels: 1..6 smart_quotes: lsquo,rsquo,ldquo,rdquo input: GFM hard_wrap: false footnote_nr: 1 show_warnings: false ``` ## Liquid Options Liquid's response to errors can be configured by setting `error_mode`. The options are - `lax` --- Ignore all errors. - `warn` --- Output a warning on the console for each error. - `strict` --- Output an error message and stop the build. You can also configure Liquid's renderer to catch non-assigned variables and non-existing filters by setting `strict_variables` and / or `strict_filters` to `true` respectively. {% include docs_version_badge.html version="3.8.0" %} Do note that while `error_mode` configures Liquid's parser, the `strict_variables` and `strict_filters` options configure Liquid's renderer and are consequently, mutually exclusive. ## Markdown Options The various Markdown renderers supported by Jekyll sometimes have extra options available. ### Custom Markdown Processors If you're interested in creating a custom markdown processor, you're in luck! Create a new class in the `Jekyll::Converters::Markdown` namespace: ```ruby class Jekyll::Converters::Markdown::MyCustomProcessor def initialize(config) require 'funky_markdown' @config = config rescue LoadError STDERR.puts 'You are missing a library required for Markdown. Please run:' STDERR.puts ' $ [sudo] gem install funky_markdown' raise FatalException.new("Missing dependency: funky_markdown") end def convert(content) ::FunkyMarkdown.new(content).convert end end ``` Once you've created your class and have it properly set up either as a plugin in the `_plugins` folder or as a gem, specify it in your `_config.yml`: ```yaml markdown: MyCustomProcessor ``` ## Incremental Regeneration
Incremental regeneration is still an experimental feature

While incremental regeneration will work for the most common cases, it will not work correctly in every scenario. Please be extremely cautious when using the feature, and report any problems not listed below by opening an issue on GitHub.

Incremental regeneration helps shorten build times by only generating documents and pages that were updated since the previous build. It does this by keeping track of both file modification times and inter-document dependencies in the `.jekyll-metadata` file. Under the current implementation, incremental regeneration will only generate a document or page if either it, or one of its dependencies, is modified. Currently, the only types of dependencies tracked are includes (using the {% raw %}`{% include %}`{% endraw %} tag) and layouts. This means that plain references to other documents (for example, the common case of iterating over `site.posts` in a post listings page) will not be detected as a dependency. To remedy some of these shortfalls, putting `regenerate: true` in the front-matter of a document will force Jekyll to regenerate it regardless of whether it has been modified. Note that this will generate the specified document only; references to other documents' contents will not work since they won't be re-rendered. Incremental regeneration can be enabled via the `--incremental` flag (`-I` for short) from the command-line or by setting `incremental: true` in your configuration file.