If and When

A Jekyll theme and site for ifandwhen.org.

Setup

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.2+
• Bundler

Local development

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ifandwhen.git
cd ifandwhen
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Site runs at http://localhost:4000.

---

Writing essays

Create a new file in _posts/ following Jekyll's naming convention:

_posts/YYYY-MM-DD-slug-here.md

Front matter

---
layout: essaytitle: "Your Title Here"subtitle: "One or two sentences. This appears as the lede under the title and in the post listing."kicker: "Essay"# appears above the title — "Essay", "Field Notes", etc.date: 2025-04-01author: "Scot Campbell"read_time: 10# minutes, shown in the header
---

Then write the body in Markdown.

---

Special includes

Pull quote

{% includepull-quote.htmlquote="The text of your pull quote goes here." %}

Two-column comparison box

{% includecomparison.htmllabel_a="Label for left column"phrase_a="The key phrase on the left"desc_a="A sentence or two describing the left side."label_b="Label for right column"phrase_b="The key phrase on the right"desc_b="A sentence or two describing the right side."
%}

Section break

Use a standard Markdown horizontal rule — it renders as the styled section break:

---

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Deployment

Push to main. The GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/deploy.yml builds with Jekyll 4 and deploys automatically.

Custom domain

The CNAME file is already set to ifandwhen.org. In your GitHub repo settings under Pages, set the custom domain to ifandwhen.org and enable HTTPS.

In your DNS provider, add:

Type	Name	Value
A	@	185.199.108.153
A	@	185.199.109.153
A	@	185.199.110.153
A	@	185.199.111.153
CNAME	www	yourusername.github.io

---

Content types

Layout	Use for	Front matter kicker
essay	Long-form pieces (default)	Essay
essay	Shorter observational writing	Field Notes
note	Brief thoughts, no drop cap	Note

Notes live in _notes/ (a Jekyll collection). Essays and field notes live in _posts/.