Get a Text Editor

Static web projects like CollectionBuilder are really just a folder of plain text files. To edit them you will need a good text editor. Code editors will allow you to work on whole folders of files at once (i.e. your Jekyll project repository) and have built in helpers for syntax highlighting, version control, terminals, search, and even spell check.

If you don’t already have a favorite editor, the CollectionBuilder team suggests the very popular, open-source Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Download VS Code and use their wizard to install with the default options on your computer.

If you are unfamiliar with editors, there is pretty good VS Code documentation including videos and reference, but you will learn a lot just working through you CB project!

Configuring Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) has a tremendous number of extensions that can be added to enhance its functionality. We recommend:

• Code Spell Checker, which will check your spelling.
• Rainbow CSV, highlights CSVs to make them easier to read.

VS Code is incredibly customizable via its settings as well. To configure the editor, click the gear icon in the bottom left corner of the VSCode window and choose Settings. The searchable Settings pane has information about all the configuration options.

When you first install VS Code, the default settings can be distracting, so don’t be afraid to turn things off!

Finally, if you are on Windows, you will want to configure your built in terminal to use Git Bash (rather than Power Shell). Open the build in terminal window using Ctrl + backtick (that little character next to the “1” key). A dropdown is available on the upper left of the terminal pane to switch your terminal. Set it to use Git Bash as default to ensure you can use Jekyll correctly.