Link Search Menu Expand Document

CollectionBuilder

Build Locally and Self Host

The most common way to build your CB-CSV site is to use Jekyll on your local computer (which can also be done with CB-GH if desired!).

Jekyll build is a bit different than using the development server because it outputs all the URLs used in the site to match your final deployment location based on your configuration options. The build version will include real URLs, swapping out the development links starting with http://localhost:4000/ used by jekyll s with the production url value you have configured, e.g. https://example.org.

Build with Rake Deploy

If you are running a development server (jekyll s), stop the server by typing Ctrl + C in the terminal. Otherwise, open a terminal window in your project repository (usually the integrated terminal in your text editor). Then give the command:

rake deploy

This will run the Jekyll build command which may take quite a bit longer than Jekyll serve (for details to why, see below). Once finished, your complete site will be output in the “_site” directory.

P.S. rake deploy is short hand for the full command JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build which we thought was too long to remember!

Move the Files

With the build complete, the files in “_site” are your digital collection, ready to go to their final home! The full contents of “_site” need to be copied to your web server.

How you move the files will depend on the access set up for your server. For static servers, some common options include:

  • Network drive / Shared folder: your organization’s IT may provide a network drive that you can use just like a normal folder on your computer. Open “_site”, select everything (Ctrl + A), and copy (Ctrl + C). Open the web folder in the location you want to deploy and paste (Ctrl + V) the contents of “_site” in.
  • SFTP: many traditional servers have FTP access. Use an FTP client to upload the contents of “_site” to your server in the location you want to deploy.
  • cPanel: many hosts (such as Reclaim) provide cPanel as a web based interface to your server. Click on “File Manager” to upload files via the web interface. Your server will generally have a folder named something like “public_html” that represents the root of your website.

Tip: If you don’t have a server, it is possible to build and host all CB projects via GitHub Pages. This works well if your objects are hosted elsewhere since you won’t encounter size limits in your repository. Check GitHub Actions and Third party build services for more info.

The files in “_site” will use URLs based on what you set in “_config.yml”. Some features and navigation may be broken if your “URL variables” do not match the actual location deployed!

Details of the Build Process

During the build process, Jekyll knits together the data, configuration, Markdown, and modular components of the template to output a complete site. The output is the web like it’s 1999–a folder of HTML, CSS, and JS files that make up a static website.

During both Jekyll serve and build, your project code is processed and output into the “_site” folder.

When you’re generating a test site using bundle exec jekyll s, Jekyll automatically builds all the pages with links based on the development server, by default using urls that start with http://127.0.0.1:4000/ or http://localhost:4000/.

For deployment, the command bundle exec jekyll build builds the site using links based on the production URLs configured in “_config.yml”.

However, to build out EVERYTHING you need to add one more option–the Jekyll “production” environment. Some features (meta tags and analytics) are only added to your CollectionBuilder site when built in the “production” environment. This saves time during development and avoids false analytics data.

The production ENV adds:

The environment can be added before the Jekyll command, like JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build. To make it easier, CollectionBuilder provides the rake deploy command as an alternative. It is also the environment used by the automatic build on GitHub Pages!