Minimal Mistakes

Theme by Mmistakes

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Updated: 2 May 2025

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12941 Stars

A popular and well maintained Jekyll theme suitable for blogs, personal and portfolio sites. This theme is extremely well coded, highly customizable and well documented.

Categories

Overview

The Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme is a flexible two-column theme that is perfect for building personal sites, blogs, and portfolios. The theme has a minimalistic styling that allows for customization by the user. It is compatible with GitHub Pages and has support for Jekyll’s built-in Sass/SCSS preprocessor. It also supports nine different color variations. The theme is optimized for search engines and has support for Twitter Cards and Open Graph data. It includes several responsive layout options and has features like optional header images, custom sidebars, table of contents, galleries, related posts, breadcrumb links, navigation lists, and more. It also has support for commenting through platforms like Disqus, Facebook, Google+, Discourse, utterances, and giscus. The theme also includes support for Google Analytics. It supports localization in multiple languages.

Features

• Bundled as a “theme gem” for easier installation/upgrading.
• Compatible with GitHub Pages.
• Support for Jekyll’s built-in Sass/SCSS preprocessor.
• Nine different skins (color variations).
• Several responsive layout options (single, archive index, search, splash, and paginated home page).
• Optimized for search engines with support for Twitter Cards and Open Graph data.
• Optional header images, custom sidebars, table of contents, galleries, related posts, breadcrumb links, navigation lists, and more.
• Commenting support (powered by Disqus, Facebook, Google+, Discourse, static-based via Staticman, utterances, and giscus).
• Google Analytics support.
• Support for localization in multiple languages.

Installation

There are three ways to install the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme:

1. Gem-based method:

   • Add the following to your Gemfile:

   remote_theme: "mmistakes/minimal-mistakes"
   

   • Fetch and update bundled gems by running the following Bundler command:

   bundle install
   

   • Set the theme in your project’s Jekyll _config.yml file:

   theme: minimal-mistakes-jekyll
   

   • To update the theme, run:

   bundle update
   

2. Remote theme method:

   • Create/replace the contents of your Gemfile with the following:

   gem "minimal-mistakes-jekyll", "~> 4.24.0"
   

   • Add jekyll-include-cache to the plugins array of your _config.yml.

   • Fetch and update bundled gems by running the following Bundler command:

   bundle install
   

   • Add remote_theme: "mmistakes/minimal-mistakes@4.24.0" to your _config.yml file. Remove any other theme: or remote_theme: entry.

3. Forking/directly copying all of the theme files into your project:

   • Copy all the theme files into your Jekyll project.
   • Customize and configure the theme as needed.

Summary

The Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme is a versatile theme that is suitable for building personal sites, blogs, and portfolios. It offers a minimalistic design that can be customized according to the user’s preferences. It comes bundled as a “theme gem” for easier installation and upgrading. The theme includes various features like support for different skins, responsive layouts, optimization for search engines, optional header images, commenting support, and more. The theme can be installed using the gem-based method, remote theme method, or by directly copying the theme files into the project. Overall, the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme is a comprehensive theme that provides a great foundation for creating a professional website or blog.