DEV Community: Trần Gia Bảo

How to Add Table of Contents to Jekyll Blog

Trần Gia Bảo — Sat, 07 May 2022 06:50:19 +0000

In lengthy blog entries with a lot of depth, a table of contents is a useful component to include. It's one of the most effective strategies to allow your readers to skim through your content. With headlines, it provides a good overview of the entire article. How long will it take readers to find the area that interests them the most if they don't have that? If you're using WordPress, you can use plugins to get it easily. However, if you are using Jekyll, use this tutorial to add a Table of Contents to your Jekyll website.

Why Jekyll posts need Table of Contents?

If you are a regular reader of books or read articles and tutorials on websites, you will not be surprised to come across the Table of Contents section. It might look something like this:

So what is the benefit of adding TOC to blog sites, especially Jekyll Blog? Let's find out together:

Enhancing user experience: If the article is really brief, a table of contents for Jekyll, or any blog for that matter, is not actually necessary. A TOC section, on the other hand, is useful for a long thorough article because it allows people to skim through your postings and read the parts that interest them.
Improving your Jekyll blog's SEO: If you are a web developer and want to grow to be able to make money by installing Adsense on your website, then SEO is one of the issues that need to be prioritized. According to the CyberSprout study, TOC has an effect on SEO scores. When search engines (Google Bot, Bing Bot, …) crawl through your post and discover all of the necessary links to various headings at the start, it gives you a higher ranking.

Add Table of Contents to Jekyll Blog

After reading the benefits of TOC, would you like to add Table of Contents to your blog site? If yes, then you can continue reading. There are many ways to do it, but in this tutorial, I will go through three ways, choose the ways that work for you:

Option 1: Creating Table of Contents section on Jekyll using Kramdown

Implementing TOC is one of the features provided by Jekyll if you used Kramdown as your markdown processor. This is pretty simple because you needn’t have any JavaScript knowledge. To implement TOC you can follow these steps:

1. Set Kramdown as your markdown processor of choice. Jekyll on Github pages is set up to parse and convert Markdown to HTML for blog post pages using Kramdown by default. But in case, you changed it, you can reset it by replacing this line in your _config.yml:

markdown: kramdown

2. Whenever the Kramdown is set, you can now add the Table of Contents to your Jekyll posts by adding this line to the post file (ends with .md extension)

{:toc}

Now, Jekyll will replace the list with a TOC automatically generated from the headings in the content. You can also make it prettier with CSS:

#markdown-toc {
    border: 1px dash black;
    padding: 1rem;
    display: inline-block;
}

Option 2: Adding Table of Contents to Jekyll website using plugin

As you saw, my blog is built on the Jekyll platform. I chose it because it has many benefits such as speed, easy to setup, … and because Jekyll has various plugins you can install to improve your website style, performance and more. It also has a plugin called jekyll-toc. To add it, you will need to

1. Add this plugin to your Gemfile, which helps Jekyll to scan all plugins to serve.

gem 'jekyll-toc'

2. Starting the config process by adding these to the _config.yml file. This is one of the most important step, if you forget to add this line, it can take you hours to find the mistakes.

plugins:
  - jekyll-toc

3. Install this Jekyll plugin. Once you've added these lines of code, you're ready to run bundle install, this will add the project's required dependencies.

4. Adding this line to your post layout, in my case is _layout/post.html

{% toc %}

5. Tell the plugin which posts we'd like a TOC to appear in. This can be accomplished by including this line in the first paragraph of each blog post.

---
toc: true
---

In this option 2, I introduced a way to add a Table of Contents to Jekyll blog by using its plugins. You can also style it with CSS to make it more beautiful. If you don’t know how to do it, you can leave a comment below to contact me, I am very glad to help you.

Option 3: Adding Table of Contents to Jekyll with JavaScript

Compared to the two methods above, this way can help you customize the TOC in the most detail, so to do this you need to have a little knowledge of JavaScript. But don't worry, because in this tutorial I will help you to add TOC even if you don't know JavaScript. You can follow this procedure:

1. Downloading the project jekyll-table-of-contents from GitHub using this git command:

git clone https://github.com/ghiculescu/jekyll-table-of-contents/

2. Place the toc.js inside your repository. But I recommend you to put it in a directory contains all the javascript files, which will help you manage them easier.

3. To use the script, go to your Jekyll website and paste it in. Put this JavaScript file in the location where you want the TOC to appear. In most cases, the TOC is required for all posts. So I think you can call it in the post layout _layout/post.html. Place this line anywhere in that file:

<!-- change src value to path to file javascript -->
<script src="toc.js”"></script>

4. Calling TOC in each Jekyll post. To call it, we will need to add this line to every post file ends with .md extension.

--- 
layout: 
image: 
title: 
description:
---

<!-- Add this line -->
<div id="toc-post"></div>

5. Building the Table of Contents

Because TOC relies on headers, they are loaded prior to the start of TOC. So, add this line of code to the post layout that waits till the page is entirely loaded. If you don’t know where to put, you can put these lines to _layout/footer.html

<script>
    window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
        $("#toc-post").toc();
    })
</script>

You can also use CSS to style it

#toc-post {
   padding: 0.5rem 0;
   margin: 1rem 0;
   line-height: 1.5; 
   background-color: #f6f6f6!important;
   border-radius: 6px;
   border: 2px solid #616161;
}

You can customize title, headers to show, … in toc.js with need JavaScript knowledge, if you want to customize it, you can learn that programming language or contact me, I will help you.

Conclusion

I hope this guide assisted you in adding a table of contents to your Jekyll blog. You can reach out to me in the comments section below if you require assistance. I look forward to seeing you in the next post.

How to Install WPS Office on Linux

Trần Gia Bảo — Sat, 07 May 2022 06:41:12 +0000

WPS is one of the most popular Linux apps, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and other capabilities similar to Microsoft Office. Many Linux users rely on it since it is quick and trustworthy. I'll show you how to install WPS Office on Ubuntu in this step-by-step guide.

How to Install Foxit PDF Reader on Ubuntu 21.04

Trần Gia Bảo — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 07:05:05 +0000

Foxit Reader is a free PDF reader, it is available in Windows, macOS, Android, IOS and more. Especial, Foxit Reader for Linux is one of the best PDF readers, which needs to be installed at first after installing any Linux distributions. Besides free versions, it also provides premium versions with many features, but for common demand, we can use the free version. This tutorial will introduce you to how to install Foxit Reader on Linux, especial Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 21.04 or older. Let's go.

Which is Foxit Reader used for?

At the time I wrote this tutorial, Foxit Reader contains many features for Linux. These features include:

Lightweight and quick
Intuitive User Interface
Comments support
Multiple PDF documents support
Protect PDF files
Text search, page rotation
Zoom in and out
Annotate PDF support
Print PDF documents
Participate in a shared review

Install Foxit PDF Reader on Ubuntu and other Linux distros

It is not a built-in application Linux. So that, in order to install Foxit PDF Reader on Ubuntu or on other Linux distributions, we need to follow these steps.

How to Embed Google Drive Video to Website

Trần Gia Bảo — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 07:42:01 +0000

Google Drive is one of the best cloud storage. It is developed by Google, which allows users to store files, synchronize across devices. In which, videos are stored on Google Drive the most, because it is easy to upload and use later. Embed Google Drive Video to WebPage is easy to work for web developers, you don’t need to upload to Youtube and use its feature. You can embed video directly to your website. Following this guide, you can know how to Embed Google Drive to Website.

Remote Desktop Connection to Connect Windows PC from Ubuntu 21.04

Trần Gia Bảo — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 14:02:05 +0000

Remote Desktop is one of the useful features on Windows. It allows your computer to connect and control another one. This feature is also can be used on Ubuntu and other major Linux distributions. Remmina, a powerful RDP client that enables you to connect to Windows PC from Ubuntu remotely or from Ubuntu to Ubuntu. The following steps will show you how to setup, configure, and connect to a remote desktop connection from Ubuntu to Windows.

1 Minute to Learn Grep Command in Linux with Examples

Trần Gia Bảo — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 07:47:40 +0000

Grep command is one of the best common ones for Unix users. If you use it well, you can improve your productivity using Linux. In this article, I will help you learn grep command in linux with simple examples. I believe that you can be a grep expert after reading this post.

Tips to Speed Up Python

Trần Gia Bảo — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:41:35 +0000

Python is an interpreted language. After writing a Python program, you instruct the interpreter to run it. It executes the program one line at a time, first translating and then running each line. As a result, your Python application will run very slowly. However, by optimizing the code given in this post, we can speed up Python excretion. You may speed up your programs and code by following this method.

Lazy Loading Google Adsense

Trần Gia Bảo — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:33:25 +0000

The speed of a website is crucial. It's so important that Google uses it as a ranking factor. You should make your website as speedy and simple to navigate as feasible. If you use Google Adsense on your website, you should consider boosting the speed of your site because Adsense slows it down.

Ubuntu 21.10 Released, Steps to Upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04

Trần Gia Bảo — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:27:08 +0000

As mentioned at the outset, the Ubuntu 21.10 was released on October 14, 2021, with many new features, key changes and update coming with.

Ubuntu 21.10: New Features

Ubuntu 21.10 or Ubuntu Impish Indri is a Debian-based Linux distribution that uses largely free and open-source software. For Internet of Things devices and robots, Ubuntu is available in three editions: Desktop, Server, and Core. All editions can be installed on a single computer or on a virtual machine.

Ubuntu 21.10 - the newest Ubuntu was released, and contains many features:

Gnome 40, contains many features like touchpad gestures, many core apps.
Linux Kernel 5.14 with enhanced hardware support and performance improving
A new desktop installer
Light Theme now is the default theme

Software Requirements

Category	System Requirements
System	Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo
Access	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command
Hardware	- 2 GHz dual core processor - 4 GiB RAM (system memory) - Hard drive space: 25 GB (8.6 GB as a minimum) (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach) - VGA with a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels - For the installer media, you'll need a CD/DVD drive or a USB port. - Internet access is helpful

Steps to Upgrade Ubuntu To 21.10 Impish Indri using commands

How To Use Dark Mode in Google Colaboratory

Trần Gia Bảo — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 10:33:55 +0000

Google Colab notebooks allow you to combine executable code and rich text in a single document, along with images, HTML, LaTeX and more. And here is how to turn on dark mode in Google Colab.

How to Install and Uninstall Tmux on Linux - Tmux Cheat Sheet

Trần Gia Bảo — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 08:40:48 +0000

Tmux is an open-source terminal multiplexer for Unix-like operating systems. It allows multiple terminal sessions to be accessed simultaneously in a single window. Tmux can be disconnected from a screen and left running in the background, then reattached later.

This guide will help you install Tmux Ubuntu and other Linux distributions (Fedora, CentOS / RHEL, Arch Linux). This one also helps you how to Uninstall Tmux and Cheat Sheet that you can need. Choose a way for your Linux device.

How To Install Python 3 On Ubuntu 18.04 (21.10)

Trần Gia Bảo — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 03:29:04 +0000

According to Python’s docs, Python is an interpreted, object-oriented, high-level programming language with dynamic semantics. Its high-level built-in data structures, combined with dynamic typing and dynamic binding, make it very attractive for Rapid Application Development, as well as for use as a scripting or glue language to connect existing components.

Prerequisites to install Python 3?

Operating system: Linux - Ubuntu 16.04 to 20.10 with 2GB RAM (4GB preferable)
You can use a terminal to run Linux script
A user account with sudo privileges