Modern Infinity

A Theme For Jekyll

Modern Infinity

This is Modern Infinity, a theme for Jekyll. It is based on the Cayman theme.

I liked the design of Cayman, but it is a very simple theme, intended for a small Github Pages site to accompany a Github project. I wanted a theme with the same basic design, so I copied the code and started adding features.

Modern Infinity has the following enhancements over Cayman:

  • Icons. The theme ships with the free Open Iconic icon set, but also supports the paid Iconic set. These icon sets use SVG, and this theme includes them in a way which allows you change the color of the icons (and make any other modifications using CSS).
  • A sidebar with support for lists of links. This also lets you automatically generate a list of recent posts.
  • A footer with customizable text. This can include:
    • A copyright or copyleft notice, with licensing information
    • An icon showing the license used, if you’re releasing content under a Creative Commons license or into the Public Domain
    • The time the site was last updated
    • A list of links
    • Any additional text you wish to display at the bottom of your site
  • A navigation bar at the top of the site. You can easily customize the links using the _data/navigation.yml file. Each link can use any icon in the icon set.
  • The ability to add a color banner at the top of a page, with an icon from the icon set in the center.
  • Support for jekyll_picture_tag, a plugin which allows you to use responsive images. (This plugin isn’t supported on Github Pages.)
  • A template to display images and thumbnails, which places the image within a thin frame that can optionally show a caption underneath. If supported, it automatically uses jekyll_picture_tag to display responsive images.
  • A template that creates a grid to easily showcase up to 3 pages. For each page in the grid, it displays a thumbnail and the page name, and highlights the item when you hover over the item with your mouse. (To show more than 3 pages, you can include this template multiple times.)
  • A template to display an attention-grabbing message, such as a warning. It separates itself from your other content by using a box with a customizable background color, an icon on the left side, and your message in the remaining space. You can choose any icon from the icon set.
  • Underneath the title of posts (a special type of page), it shows a calendar icon and the date the post was published. Also, if you update a post after publishing it, you can add last_modified_at: yyyy-mm-dd (with the actual date) to the post’s front matter, and next to the publish date it will show a refresh icon and the date the post was updated.