Working with Collections in Jekyll: An Exploration of Powerful Content Organization

Introduction

Jekyll, a popular static site generator, has gained significant traction in the web development community due to its simplicity and flexibility in creating websites and blogs. While Jekyll is primarily known for its ability to generate static content from Markdown and HTML files, it offers an advanced feature called collections that empowers developers to efficiently manage and present diverse types of content, such as blog posts, portfolio items, or products. In this section, we’ll delve into Jekyll collections, exploring their use cases, implementation, and code explanations to help you harness this powerful feature effectively.

Understanding Jekyll Collections

In Jekyll, a collection is a group of documents that share a common purpose or content structure. While the default collections are typically posts and pages, Jekyll allows developers to define custom collections, enabling more specialized content organization. This is particularly useful when dealing with content types that possess unique attributes or metadata.

Use Cases for Custom Collections

• Portfolio Showcase: If you’re building a portfolio website, you might want to showcase your projects or creative works. Using a custom collection allows you to create a consistent template for each portfolio item and display them in an organized manner.

• Product Catalog: For an e-commerce site, organizing products using collections can streamline the management of product information, images, and other attributes, facilitating the creation of a well-structured catalog.

• Documentation: When creating extensive documentation for a project, custom collections can help categorize different types of documentation, such as guides, tutorials, and API references, making it easier for users to navigate and find relevant information.

Implementing Custom Collections

Let’s walk through the process of creating and utilizing a custom collection named portfolio for a portfolio website.

Step 1: Define the Collection

In your Jekyll project’s _config.yml file, define the new collection:

collections:
  portfolio:
    output: true

This creates a collection named portfolio and enables its content to be output as HTML.

Step 2: Organize Content

Create a new directory in your project’s root directory called _portfolio. Inside this directory, add Markdown files for each portfolio item. For instance, _portfolio/project1.md, _portfolio/project2.md, and so on.

Step 3: Front Matter

In each Markdown file, include front matter to define metadata specific to the portfolio item:

---
title: Project 1
description: A brief overview of Project 1.
image: /assets/project1.jpg
---

Step 4: Create a Layout

Design a layout in your project’s _layouts directory specifically for the portfolio items. Customize it to display the metadata you defined in the front matter.

Step 5: Rendering the Collection

In a page where you want to display the portfolio items, loop through the collection and render each item using the custom layout:

---
layout: default
title: Portfolio
---

<h1>Portfolio</h1>

% for project in site.portfolio %
  <h2>{ project.title }</h2>
  <p>{ project.description }</p>
  <img src="{ project.image }" alt="{ project.title }">
% endfor %

Conclusion

Jekyll collections provide an elegant solution for organizing and presenting various types of content beyond the default posts and pages. Custom collections enable developers to maintain a structured approach to content management, enhancing the user experience by facilitating content discovery and navigation. By following this tutorial, you’ve gained insights into the creation and utilization of custom collections in Jekyll, equipping you with the tools to implement this powerful feature in your projects. Whether you’re building a portfolio, a product catalog, or a documentation hub, Jekyll collections can be your ally in creating well-organized and impactful websites.

Thanks for reading, see you in the next one!