Apollo

A minimal, high-performance Jekyll theme for personal websites and blogs. Designed for readability and elegance.

Features

• 🎨 Two Beautiful Themes: Choose between Paper (Clean Ivory/Slate) and Flexoki (Warm Earthy).
• 📱 Responsive & Mobile-First: Optimized layout for all devices.
• 🌙 Dark Mode Support: Automatic and manual toggle.
• ✍️ Typography Focused: Optimized for long-form reading.
• 🎯 Syntax Highlighting: Beautiful code blocks with language support.
• 🔍 SEO Optimized: Built-in metadata and social tags.

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Themes

Apollo comes with two pre-configured color themes. The default is Paper.

Switching Themes

To switch to Flexoki, edit assets/css/styles.scss:

// @use "themes/paper";      <-- Comment this out
@use "themes/flexoki";    // <-- Uncomment this

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Quick Start (Template Development)

For working on Apollo itself:

# Prerequisites
brew install fswatch           # File watcher for live reload
brew install vips              # Image processing for OG images
bundle install                 # Ruby dependencies

# Run locally
bash scripts/compose.sh serve

Open http://localhost:4000 - edits to _sass/, _layouts/, etc. auto-reload.

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Use Apollo for Your Site

Step 1: Create Your Site Repo

mkdir my-site && cd my-site
git init

Step 2: Add Apollo as a Subtree

git remote add apollo https://github.com/defaults/apollo.git
git fetch apollo
git subtree add --prefix=apollo apollo master --squash

Step 3: Run Setup Script

bash apollo/scripts/setup-site.sh

This creates:

my-site/
├── apollo/               # Theme (git subtree - don't edit directly)
├── content/              # Your markdown files (edit this!)
│   ├── _essays/          # Blog posts
│   ├── home/index.md     # Homepage
│   └── about.md          # About page
├── overrides/            # Optional theme overrides
├── scripts/
│   └── compose.sh        # Build script (delegates to apollo)
├── _config.local.yml     # Your site config
├── app.yaml              # GCP App Engine config
└── .github/workflows/
    └── deploy.yml        # CI/CD workflow

Step 4: Configure Your Site

Edit _config.local.yml:

title: "Your Name"
description: "Your tagline"
url: "https://yoursite.com"
author:
  name: "Your Name"

# SEO & Social
twitter:
  username: "yourhandle"
social:
  links:
    - https://twitter.com/yourhandle
    - https://github.com/yourhandle

Step 5: SEO & LLM Optimization

• SEO: Handled automatically by jekyll-seo-tag. Ensure title, description, url, and logo are set in _config.local.yml.
• LLM SEO: A /llms.txt file is automatically generated for AI indexing.

Step 6: Add Your Content

Edit files in content/:

# content/_essays/2024-01-01-my-first-post.md
---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2024-01-01
---

Write your content here in markdown.

Step 7: Run Locally

# Install dependencies (once)
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=apollo/Gemfile bundle install
brew install fswatch

# Serve with live reload
bash scripts/compose.sh serve

Open http://localhost:4000

Step 8: Deploy

Push to GitHub. The included workflow deploys to GCP App Engine.

Required secret: GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY (your GCP service account JSON)

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Updating the Theme

git fetch apollo
git subtree pull --prefix=apollo apollo master --squash

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Customization

Override Theme Files

Copy any file from apollo/ to overrides/ with the same path and modify it:

# Example: customize the header
cp apollo/_includes/header.html overrides/_includes/header.html
# Edit overrides/_includes/header.html

CSS Variables

The theme uses CSS custom properties. Override in overrides/assets/css/custom.scss:

:root {
  --color-action: #your-color;
}

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Project Structure

Directory	Purpose	Edit?
apollo/	Theme (subtree)	❌ No
content/	Your markdown	✅ Yes
overrides/	Theme overrides	✅ Yes
_config.local.yml	Site config	✅ Yes

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Commands

Command	Description
bash scripts/compose.sh serve	Build and serve with live reload
bash scripts/compose.sh build	Build site (for CI/manual builds)
bash scripts/compose.sh clean	Remove build directory

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License

MIT