Sorry about Adam’s keyboard noise and yes, this could be a very short video but we felt like there are people who could use a more in-depth discussion.
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
Did you know that time spent using a browser on a PC is 60%?
The browser is a critical part of any organization’s applications and there is a lot of changes happening in this space. Join us for some great presentations and demos on managing the browser
Session Schedule (all times are Eastern Standard Timezone)
Intro - Julie Andreacola & Adam Gross
Managing Chrome - Chris Kibble
Managing and Deploying Edge in MEMCM and Intune - Donna Ryan
GPO implementation for Edge - Chad Brower
Browser Compatibility: Saying Goodbye to Internet Explorer - Julie Andreacola
PolicyPak: Manage your Desktops and Browsers via Group Policy and Intune - Jeremy Moskowitz
What’s cool in Edge & Edge Roadmap - Colleen Williams
Edge and Security - Colleen Williams
Q&A - All
In this video the guys discuss the migrating Microsoft Defender Firewall rules from Group Policy to Microsoft Intune. They cover the basics of using Endpoint Security to set up the basic firewall policy then demo a script that will import configured firewall rules directly into Intune.
The intern stuffed up an application deployment, so we dive into the Intune Management Extension (IME) logs to find out what went wrong and show you some of the more advanced things you can do with the available logs from Intune!
We are excited to welcome Jake Shackelford to the Intune.Training team! We also discuss channel format changes to help our audience find the right content for their learning styles.
In this video, our first video https://youtu.be/OkeUN-tdfqs and show how to build a new Intune tenant and get started with Windows Autopilot in under an hour. This video is designed as a quick start guide. Watch our other videos for more in-depth discussions.
From the comments:
You kind of breezed by the enrollment options at about six minutes in, and I know it’s targeted towards the iOS/Android piece which isn’t the sexiness of Windows 10 management, but that is the most frequently used setting on this page for deployments.
If you are doing a MAM-only deployment, on Android the company portal is required. The biggest problem people have are users opening up the company portal and trying to enroll their device. Sure, you can block personally enrolled devices with restrictions, but the better thing to do, IMO, is to just make the enrollment unavailable. They can sign in to the company portal and poke around but won’t be able to enroll their device.
This is also useful for iOS where you want to make apps available for unenrolled devices and give the users a “company app store” with links to apps on the app store, but not pester them with trying to enroll the second they sign in to the company portal.
Then, if you need to allow enrollment, you can create a new template profile and assign it to a group of users, or change it to available, no prompts so that users have to go to the devices tab and manually choose to enroll the devices.
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
Details
Join us for a special session on leveraging Windows Feature Updates to upgrade Windows 10. We have 9 community experts to discuss real-world strategies for managing Windows 10 Feature Updates in the Enterprise without Task Sequences.
You will learn how others have implemented Feature Updates in their enterprise and why. We will also be sharing tools, scripts, and troubleshooting to expand your options for solving problems encountered in your environment
Note: We will be recording these sessions. We will be using a Teams meeting so if you do not wish to be recorded, please wait for the recordings to be published.
How Can I Get Started? - Help me Toss the Task Sequence - How to start leveraging Feature Updates in your enterprise today and handle necessary customizations and drivers
Setting up for Success -Assessment Tools and techniques for ensuring successful Feature Updates
Set it and Forget it - Using Intune to manage Feature Updates while maintaining control
Trust but Verify - Reporting strategies to validate success and highlight issues
When the Wheels fall Off - Everything we know about troubleshooting
We had a great time talking with Cathy Moya about Microsoft engages the MEM community through programs designed to help customers get the most from their investments. We also discussed Women IT Pros and how she started a movement to help Women in Tech be accepted into the IT Community.
NOTE
This is not a sponsored. We love Justin and Cody’s community work and they are innovating in this space. They also happen to sell software. If you think their software is a good fit for you, contact them. Otherwise, enjoy the awesome info these guys have to offer.
Please submit your favorite clips by August 31. Link to the episode and the timestamp with a description of your favorite clip or favorite comments. Leave as a comment on this video, or DM us on Twitter.
44:20 - Riley misspoke about VirusTotal - VirusTotal DOES use Cloud Signatures when it scans with Defender, differences in execution by VirusTotal might sometimes result in a different result.
Steve and Ben drag Adam trough more security stuff. Adam is thrilled.
Microsoft released a new Web protection feature on securitycenter.microsoft.com which uses the 3rd party Cyren web proxy. This does require an E5 License.
Prerequisites
Before trying out this feature, make sure you have the following:
Windows 10 Enterprise E5 license
Access to Microsoft Defender Security Center portal
Machines running Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) or later with the latest MoCAMP update (for Network Protection on Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, or Firefox)
Machines running Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) or later (for a better user experience from SmartScreen on Edge). Note that if SmartScreen is not turned on, Network Protection will take over the blocking
A valid license with a partner data provider
Microsoft Intune Program Manager Matt Shadbolt joins us to give a deep dive into the new Endpoint Security features in Intune and ConfigMgr Tenant Attach security features.
Join Steve and Adam as they chat with Ben and Leon from the UK about their real world experiences with managing Intune. Note - there’s no demo content, so this is great episode for background listening.
Our special guest Michael Niehaus from Microsoft joins the guys for advanced AutoPilot troubleshooting. We also talk about customer challenges and product direction.
I created Bulma Clean Theme as a theme for my own website and decided to open source it so others could use it as well. One of the key things I wanted to do was to create a theme that worked with GitHub Pages, which also means that you can also use it as a docs site for your project.
GitHub Pages Configuration
GitHub pages allows you to create a website for your project with free hosting. Go to your repo on GitHub, then click Settings, then scroll down to the GitHub Pages section. You have the option to create a site from the root of your master branch of from the /docs directory in your master branch. For this example, we are going to use the /docs directory.
Don’t change this setting just yet as if you don’t have a docs directory there will be nothing there to publish.
Creating the docs directory
Clone your git repo to a local directory, let’s say ~/code/my-project for this example. The below assumes you don’t yet have a docs directory and you have jekyll installed. If you do already have a docs directory you will have to rename it to something else.
Create a new jekyll installation in the docs directory, ensuring you replace your username and project name in the below example.
git clone https://github.com/username/my-project.git ~/code/my-project
cd ~/code/my-project
jekyll new docs
You should now have a base install of Jekyll in your freshly created docs directory.
Configuring the theme
Replace everything in the Gemfile with the following
Open the _config.yml and comment out or delete the line theme: minima and replace it with remote_theme: chrisrhymes/bulma-clean-theme, then add github-pages to the list of plugins. Update the baseurl to your GitHub repo name, in this example we are using my-project as the repo name
Open the index.md file and update the front matter so the layout is page and then add a title
layout:pagetitle:Docs for My Project
Run bundle install and then bundle exec jekyll serve
Visit http://localhost:4000/my-project/ to view your new docs page.
Menu
To create a menu on the left on your docs page you need to create a new yaml file in _data directory, such as menu.yaml and then use the below format, where the label will be the menu title and the items are the menu items. Each menu item can have a list of sub menu items if needed.
-label:Example Menuitems:-name:Menu itemlink:/link/items:-name:Sub menu itemlink:/sub-menu-item/
Table of contents
If you would like auto generated table of contents for your docs page then add toc: true to the page’s front matter. The table of contents works for markdown pages and loops through the heading 2s and heading 3s in the markdown and then auto generates the contents.
GitHub Sponsors
If you want to link to your GitHub sponsors profile then add gh_sponsor with your username to the _config.yml file.
gh_sponsor: chrisrhymes
Making the docs page live
Once you have finished creating your docs page you can commit your changes and push everything up to GitHub. Go back to the GitHub settings page and scroll back down to the GitHub Pages section. Now we can update the setting to use the Master branch /docs folder and then GitHub will build your new docs page.
Want to see an example?
I recently updated one of my own packages to use Bulma Clean Theme to power the docs page. Check out the docs for Bulma Block List as an example.
Steve and Adam discuss try to keep it together as they discuss new cloud features for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manger 2002 to help extend your On-Premises infrastructure into Intune.
At the end of the 2020 MVP Summit, which was held virtually this year due to the Corona Virus Pandemic, we held an impromptu MVP and MEM Team roundtable. We had no real plan other than just chat about our experiences with managing ConfigMgr and Intune in the real world. There aren’t any demos - we just talk about topics such as Feature Updates in Intune, AutoPilot, Security, Customer needs and more. We hope to host more if these in the future (with a bit more planning I hope), so let us know how you like this and what you’d like to see in the future.
This is an impromptu session with Adam Gross and Bryan Dam discussing strategies for managing remote devices with ConfigMgr due to the increased needs for VPN and Work From Home brought on by COVID-19 - the Corona Virus. There was no planning or prep going into this and was just a Teams meeting that we recorded, so please don’t complain about the quality, we just wanted to have an open discussion around strategies for managing devices.
In this episode, Steve and Adam struggle to get Windows Hello for Business working using the Hybrid Key trust. Hybrid Key Trust will allow you to access on-premises resources using Windows Hello for Business credentials.
Steve and Adam have a chat with Dune Desormeaux, Program Manager for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, at MMSJazz. Sorry, no demos, just a chat with Dune about how the new Microsoft Endpoint Manager changes will impact the future of Intune and ConfigMgr.
In this episode, Ben Reader joins Adam to discuss more advanced PowerShell scripting within Microsoft Intune. (Sorry again for the choppy audio. We just can’t win!)
I’ve been meaning to write about some of the new features I have been rolling out to my Jekyll theme, Bulma Clean Theme, for a while but I have only just managed to push the update for the landing page layout last weekend. This article provides some of the thinking behind the updates, as well as a brief introduction to how to get started.
Product Pages
I use the theme to power my own personal website and decided that it would be good to update my book pages, or book page as it was then. The page had used a very simple layout with both books on one page and was not really up to scratch. I decided it would be better to make each book its own page, and if I ever get round to it and write another book it would be easy to add another to the site in the future. Rather than just building these pages for my own site, I thought it would be a nice addition to the base theme.
I really like Jekyll as it is simple to use, but also very powerful. I decided to make the most of the frontmatter and allow you to set most of the product information in there, leaving the main content of the page for the text description.
To get started, create your product pages inside a _products directory as we will make use of collections later on.
The below is an example of the frontmatter for the product page. The product page uses the same hero, title and subtitle settings as other pages, but has additional settings for product code, image, price, rating and features. The product code is important for later on.
---title:Product 1 Namesubtitle:Product 1 tagline heredescription:This is a product descriptionhero_image:/img/hero-img.jpgproduct_code:ABC124layout:productimage:https://via.placeholder.com/640x480price:£1.99 + VATfeatures:-label:Great addition to any homeicon:fa-location-arrow-label:Comes in a range of stylesicon:fa-grin-stars-label:Available in multiple sizesicon:fa-fighter-jetrating:3---
The features provides a way of making a bullet point list of the key product features, but instead of plain disc bullet points you can use font awesome icons to make it a bit more interesting.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I spend longer deciding on what icon to use than making the rest of the page.
I’ve deliberately made the product pages have a 4 by 3 image ratio as I feel it works best across different screen sizes. Like all themes, if you want to change it you can override the default layouts if you want a different ratio.
Once you have created your product pages, you will need to tell Jekyll to output them. This is done by adding collections settings in the _config.yml for your site.
Now when you run jekyll build it will output a load of product pages for you, now we just need a way of getting to them. This is where the product category page comes in.
Product Category
Create a page, such as products.md or in my case books.md and set it to use the product-category layout. This will generate a list of the products, but you can also add some introduction content in the main content section of the page if you so desire.
---title:Productssubtitle:Check out our range of productslayout:product-categoryshow_sidebar:falsesort:title---This is some page content and it will appear above the product list.
Product Reviews
The last addition to the product pages is reviews. If you would like to list some customer reviews on your product pages, then you will need to create a reviews directory inside _data and create a separate file for each product with reviews, named after the product code. For example _data/reviews/ABC124.yml
The data file should follow the below format. The name is the customer name, the rating is how many stars out of 5, the title is the main title of the review and the avatar is a link to an image, if you have one. If you don’t have a customer image then just omit it and a user icon will be used instead. Lastly, the description is the main content of the review.
-name:Mr E Xamplerating:4title:Great product, highly recommendeddate:01/01/2019avatar:https://bulma.io/images/placeholders/128x128.pngdescription:>The product worked really well. I would recommend this to most people to use. Delivery was quick and reasonable. Would recommend this to my friends. -name:Mrs R E Viewrating:5title:Nice, really liked thisdate:02/02/2019description:>The product worked exactly as described.
I was thinking it would be good to create a landing style page so I could highlight a new project or something I was working on separately from the main projects page already on my site. Rather than create a new layout I thought it would be better to enhance the existing page layout so you could choose to use these features if you so desired.
I started by adding a call to action (otherwise known as a large button) in the hero at the top of the page. This can be used by adding hero_link and hero_link_text to the frontmatter.
---layout:pagetitle:Example Landing Pagesubtitle:This is an example landing page with calloutshero_height:is-largehero_link:/page-1/hero_link_text:Example Call To Action---
Next, I wanted to make some nice callouts to help shout about key features of whatever you are talking about on your landing page. This started out as a simple icon and a title, but slowly evolved to allow for a subtitle, description text and a call to action button as well.
To make it more flexible, only the title and subtitle are required and the rest can be used as and when necessary.
To make the callouts reusable in different pages on your site, the content is defined in a datafile, for example, example_callouts.yml. The below shows the example structure for the callouts.
style:is-lightitems:-title:Example callout 1subtitle:Example subtitle 1icon:fa-space-shuttledescription:>The example description text goes here and can be multiple lines.For example, such as this. call_to_action_name:Call to action 1call_to_action_link:/page-1/
The style is the style of the hero that the callouts are contained in. This makes use of Bulma hero styles.
Then to display the callouts on the page, add a callouts setting to the pages frontmatter with the name of the data file without the extension.
---layout:pagetitle:Example Landing Pagesubtitle:This is an example landing pagecallouts:example_callouts---
I’ve tried to make these additions easy to use and flexible where possible. I’ve updated the readme file and the theme demo site with more information to help you get started with these new features.
If you decide to give the theme a go, it would be great to see how you are using it and if you have any ideas of how it can be developed further. You never know, if I get enough responses then I may even make a showcase page on the demo theme site to highlight how others are using it.
I have made a theme for Jekyll which is based on the Bulma frontend framework. It might look familiar, because I am also using it for this site. If you like the look of this theme then I thought I would write a little blog post about how to use it for your own site and how you can use it with GitHub Pages.
Getting started
First things first, you need a local instance of Jekyll running on your computer. I’m assuming you are familiar with Jekyll and have everything you need installed. If this is not the case, check out the documentation on the Jekyll website. For this example, lets call the site myblog.
Create a new installation of Jekyll, then go into the myblog directory:
jekyll new myblog
cd myblog
Then add the theme to the Gemfile:
gem "bulma-clean-theme"
Then add the theme to your _config.yml:
theme:bulma-clean-theme
Then run bundle to install everything
bundle
You can then preview your site by running the usual command
bundle exec jekyll serve
Creating pages
A page can either be a html or a markdown file, as long as you set the frontmatter. There are a few settings that pages can use to customise the default theme a bit further if you so choose.
---layout:pagetitle:Page Titlesubtitle:Page Subtitleimage:/path/to/image.jpgdescription:The pages meta descriptionhero_image:/path/to/hero-image.jpghero_height:is-fullheight---
If you don’t set a subtitle, image, hero_image or hero_height then defaults will be used or in the case of the hero_image, no image will be used on the hero.
The theme uses the jekyll-seo-tag plugin so it will use the information you provide in the frontmatter to auto populate the meta tags and open graph tags.
Posts
Posts are created as per the standard Jekyll method, in a _posts directory, with each post named YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.markdown. For the post frontmatter you can use the same settings as a page, except you need to change the layout to post and add date and author settings.
Blog page
For the blog homepage, create a blog.html page with layout: blog and use the other settings from a normal page. The theme is set up to use jekyll-paginate so you just need to add pagination options to your _config.yml
If you don’t want to set each hero_image individually, then you can set default values in your _config.yml. The below example sets a default author, layout and hero image for every post. It also turns on the side bar on the right of post pages, which will display links to your latest posts.
The theme uses Bulma frontend framework which provides a wide range of sass variable customisations. If you want to overwrite any of the standard variables, such as the primary theme colour, then set a sass variable in a new file in assets/css/app.scss before importing the main stylesheet.
------
$primary:#333333;// Import Main CSS file from theme@import"main";
You can also add any of your own custom css to this file if you want to.
Navigation
Once you have created posts and pages, you will need to create a way for visitors to access them. The theme makes use of the Bulma navbar, which is configured through a simple yaml file. All you need to do is create a navigation.yml file in _data directory with the following format with the pages you want to include in the top navigation. You can now also add items to a dropdown menu.
Bulma is pretty handy in the way it converts the same HTML into a mobile / tablet friendly navigation, so you only need to set the menu up once for all screen sizes.
Using bulma-clean-theme with Github Pages
For the site to work with Github Pages, all you need to do is update the _config.yml so it uses remote_theme instead of theme and update it to chrisrhymes/bulma-clean-theme so it knows which GitHub repo to pull the theme from when it builds your site.
And then push up your changes to Github as normal.
There seems to be an issue where Jekyll doesn’t work locally with remote_theme, so when working locally you have to add theme back in, but remember to comment theme out again before pushing back up to GitHub or you will probably get a build warning email.
I hope you’re not feeling overwhelmed
It may seem like there is a lot to do to get started, but really it shouldn’t take very long to get a site up and running. All the options are there just in case you want to further customise the theme to be more personal to you, but you can just use the basic minimal settings to get yourself up and running.
Feedback and Issues
If you have any feedback, ideas or issues with how the theme could be improved, then please create an issue on the theme’s GitHub page and I will try and take a look into it as soon as I can. The theme is still quite new and I have quite a few ideas for future enhancements, so I will write a new blog post on this site when any new features become available.
There are many ways to make a website and many different CMS platforms you can use, such as WordPress and Joomla, as well as site builder tools that offer you drag and drop interfaces, but what about static site generators?
A static site is pretty much what it sounds like, a set of pre generated html pages. Other platforms take what you enter into the CMS and process the information stored in the database, alongside a template or many template partials and dynamically construct the page before serving the html to you in your browser.
Speed
The initial advantage of a static site over a dynamic, database driven site is the page speed as means a lot less processing has to be done before the page is delivered. Some CMS’s provide caching which means that the first visitor to the page gets a dynamic version and then stores a cache of the page. This means subsequent visitor to the page gets the page quicker than the first. If you have a regularly cleared cache, or low numbers of visitors, subsequent visitors may not benefit from the caching and would all experience the increased load times.
Version Control
The next advantage of a static site is that it is that it can be version controlled. Usually a CMS relies on a database, which means that if you delete a page or some page content you either have to have revisions enabled in your CMS so you can roll back to a previous version or you need regular backups of your database so you can roll that back to a previous version. A static site with version control means you can easily revert to a previous version of your site and content without the need for database manipulation.
Data Files
Static sites, such as Jekyll, also offer a way of storing data in a more human readable format, such as yaml or JSON. This means you can store data that is used in multiple places across your site in one file and reference it in many places. For example, you may have a data file containing products, which you want to list in a category page and a product details page and maybe feature it on the homepage as well. These files can also be version controlled, meaning any changes or updates to your datafiles can be undone easily. The files can also be easily edited in a text editor so if you need to make multiple product amends, such as updating a misspelt brand name you can use something as simple as find and replace to update the spelling in all places at once without having to navigate to multiple different pages in a CMS.
Design Freedom
The biggest benefit I find to a static site is there is more freedom for a frontend developer and how they design and build your site. Some CMS’s work in a particular way and you are limited by the way they work. Page builders are available for many CMS’s but it often results in a lot of effort to get a particular piece of content in a particular place on the page.
A static site generator gives you more freedom to write your own html and text onto the page in the format you want it, rather than having to customise or overwrite the html and css classes output by the page builder tool.
Data Protection
A lot of people like the idea of installing a plugin into a CMS to handle things such as contact forms, so people can contact you about something, but in all honesty, it’s easier just to have an email address on the page that users can click on and email you directly. The reason I say this is that you have to try and prevent spam emails by using some kind of captcha on the form, as well as maintaining an email service that will handle the form submission and either store the form data somewhere on your site or send it to you as an email. This is pretty basic stuff, but is further complicated by data privacy laws that dictate how you store customers data and how you protect it. I know a lot of small business users would prefer to not have the hassle of managing stored user data on their site.
Security
One last thing to consider is website security. There is always a chance that using a popular CMS will leave your site vulnerable as there are always security issues being identified. You need to constantly keep your site up to date and lock down the CMS login as secure as possible. With a static site, there is no login screen. The original content lives somewhere else and the compiled, generated html is all that needs to be uploaded to your website, minimising the risk. Any public facing website has some risk but anything you can do to minimise it is better for your website in the long run.
What will you use on your next project?
A static site may not be the first thing you consider when building your new website, but it’s definitely worth exploring the pros and cons before you start the next project. After all, a faster, more secure site is better for you and your visitors.
Sorry about Adam’s keyboard noise and yes, this could be a very short video but we felt like there are people who could use a more in-depth discussion.