Documentation

Config File

The instructions below outline the edits you need to make to this file.

To begin, locate and open the _config.yml file in the base of your repository. No matter which version you’re using, this file is used to configure the basics of your site.

URL Variables

These variables should be defined based on the url you will use to serve your site:

  • url: Represents the url where the production site will eventually reside. This will be used to generate links when you (or GitHub Pages) build the site at the end of your customization process.
    • On GitHub Pages, url will follow the pattern of <your github user name>.github.io
    • example on GitHub Pages –> url: https://dcnb.github.io
    • If self hosting, the url will be the domain or subdomain where you will be placing the site.
    • example –> url: https://www.lib.uidaho.edu
  • baseurl: Indicates the folder where your site will be located on your web server.
    • When using GH on GitHub Pages, the baseurl will be the name of your project repository.
    • example on GitHub Pages –> baseurl: /example-collection
    • If self hosting, the baseurl will be the folder where you would like to host the site (if applicable). For example, if you have a project called “pink-poodle” that you plan to put in the “projects” folder on your website, you’d put /projects/pink-poodle down for this variable.
    • example for a site to be at https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/boxing –> baseurl: /digital/boxing
    • Note: Each of your collections will have a unique project name, so you will need to adjust the baseurl setting for each collection you build.
  • source-code: Indicates the GitHub repository that hosts your CollectionBuilder project code.
    • example –> source-code: https://github.com/CollectionBuilder

Site Settings

These are the primary settings of your site:

  • title: The title of your digital collection.
    • This will appear as the title on the home page and on every other page’s header.
    • example –> title: Donald R. Theophilus Boxing Photograph Collection
  • tagline: A descriptive subtitle of the digital collection.
    • This will appear underneath the title on the home page and on every other page’s header.
    • example –> tagline: Photographs of University of Idaho Boxers and Boxing Teams, 1934 - 1953
  • description: One or two sentences of explanatory text about the collection.
    • Appears on the home page under the featured image.
    • example –> description: "A digital collection comprised of 52 photographs of boxers and boxing teams from the University of Idaho"
  • author: You! The creator of the digital collection.
    • Use your GitHub username or your name. This will appear in the site’s meta tags.
    • example –> author: evanwill

GH users: At this point you can skip to Collection Settings below.

Required Site Settings for CDM

  • organization-name: The name of your organization.
    • Used to reference your organization in the site’s citation, and serves as alternate text for your organization logos.
    • example –> "Digital Initiatives, University of Idaho Library"
  • organization-link: A link to your organization’s homepage.
    • This is the url connected to your organization name.
    • example –> https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/
  • organization-logo-banner: The image source for your organization logo that appears at the top right of the screen on all pages except the home page.
    • This logo is connected to the organization-link url you entered above.
    • example –> https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/media/digital/justdi_logo_sm.png
  • organization-logo-nav: The image source for your organization logo that appears above your site title.
    • This image will appear above the title on your collection’s homepage. This logo is connected to the organization-link url you entered above.
    • example –> https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/media/digital/bannerlogo_allwhite.png

Collection Settings

These are settings specific to your collection:

  • metadata: The filename (not including the extension) of your CSV metadata file.
    • Note: This should be the same entry as “data” in the page gen variables below.
    • example –> metadata: boxing

GH users: At this point you can skip to the Additional Variables section below.

Required Settings for CDM

  • cdm-collection-id: The name of your CONTENTdm collection (a collection alias assigned by a collection’s creator in CONTENTdm).
    • example –> cdm-collection-id: boxing
  • cdm-url (for CONTENTdm skin): The full url for your public CONTENTdm instance (with NO trailing slash!). Generally these follow the pattern “https://cdm” + a number + “.contentdm.oclc.org”, although custom domains should also work. However, your CDM admin interface url (starting with “server”, e.g. https://server12345.contentdm.oclc.org) will not work.
    • example –> cdm-url: https://cdm12345.contentdm.oclc.org
Page Generation Settings

For CDM and SA users: The following variables are used by the “Page Gen” plugin included with CollectionBuilder. The plugin generates individual HTML pages for each item (row) in your collection’s metadata (CSV):

  • data: The name of your metadata file.
    • This should be the same entry as “metadata” above
    • example –> data: boxing

Important! –> CDM and SA Users, you must change the data field in ‘Page Gen’ to reflect the metadata CSV the collection is using. This should be the same entry as “metadata” above.

“Data” is the only field you need to change. Leave the following fields the way they are in the default _config.yml template you downloaded:

  • template: The layout of the pages generated.
    • CollectionBuilder entry –> items
  • name: Determines how the url will be written. For CollectionBuilder, we use is the “objectid” metadata field to generate the url.
    • CollectionBuilder entry –> objectid
  • dir: Determines the directory or folder in which the item pages are stored when the site is built.
    • CollectionBuilder entry –> items
  • extension: Determines the extension of each generated page. For us, html means our item pages will end as ‘.html’
    • CollectionBuilder entry –> html

“Page Gen” used by CollectionBuilder is a modified version of the Jekyll plugin jekyll-datapage_gen created by Adolfo Villafiorita. Thank you Adolfo!

Additional Variables

For all user-types, the following settings in _config.yml are optional. Your site will work successfully without changing the variables below.

Google Analytics

Fill in your Google Analytics ID, if you have one:

  • google-analytics-id:
    1. Remove the hash (#) before the field to activate it.
    2. Enter your Google Analytics ID.
Robots Exclude
  • noindex:
    1. Remove the hash (#) before the field to activate it.
    2. Set to true if you do NOT want Google to index your site (If you do want your site to be indexed, just leave the # in front of this field name to keep it commented it out.)
      • example -> noindex: true
Build Settings

This section contains advanced Jekyll settings. You should probably just leave these settings as they are.

  • exclude: Tells Jekyll which files to ignore.

  • sass: Controls how the CSS is built when the site is being rendered.

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