Feature Blog is a minimalist, responsive Jekyll theme built on Bootstrap 3 that turns Markdown posts into a blog with featured images, video embeds, pagination, and social sharing metadata.
What is Feature Blog?
Feature Blog is a free, MIT-licensed Jekyll theme created by Lav Kumar Vishwakarma. It accepts Jekyll posts written in Markdown with YAML front matter and renders a responsive blog home page, post pages, category and tag pages, a custom 404 page, and Ajax-based search. The theme runs on the Jekyll static site generator and is styled with Twitter Bootstrap 3, so pages adapt to mobile and desktop viewports.
Key Features
- Bootstrap 3 framework — The theme is built on Twitter Bootstrap 3, providing a responsive grid, typography, and UI components out of the box.
- Featured images and video posts — Posts can specify an image and a video URL in YAML front matter, which the home page and post pages display prominently.
- Pagination support — Uses jekyll-paginate to split the post list into pages, with the number of posts per page set in _config.yml.
- Disqus comments — Commenting can be turned on globally by setting comments: true in _config.yml, integrating the Disqus comment system.
- MailChimp integration — A MailChimp subscription form is included for building an email list from blog readers.
- Social sharing metadata — The theme emits Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and Schema.org tags on each post so shared links show rich previews.
- Ajax search — A built-in Ajax search lets visitors filter posts without a full page reload.
- SEO and sitemap — The theme is SEO-enabled and generates a sitemap for search engines.
Who is Feature Blog for?
- Personal bloggers — Writers who want a clean, minimal blog theme with featured images and video support while keeping Jekyll's straightforward publishing workflow.
- Jekyll developers — Developers who want a configurable theme with sample posts showing image, video, category, and tag front matter, plus separate files for global settings and navigation.
- Content-driven sites — Teams or individuals who need a responsive blog that includes social sharing, search, and a subscription form without a database.
What can you do with Feature Blog?
- Publish featured-image posts — Add an image path in the post's YAML front matter and the theme will display it on the home page and post page.
- Embed videos in posts — Use the video field in front matter to embed video content directly in the post layout.
- Customize the site — Edit _config.yml, global.yml, and nav.yml to set site title, description, social profiles, author biography, and navigation links without touching HTML templates.
- Enable comments and newsletters — Turn on Disqus comments and add a MailChimp subscription form by changing configuration values.
How does Feature Blog work?
Feature Blog follows the standard Jekyll setup. Install Jekyll, fork the Feature Blog repository on GitHub, clone it locally, and edit _config.yml to personalize the site. The repository includes sample posts in the _posts directory that illustrate how to add featured images, videos, categories, tags, and other YAML data. After writing posts, build the site with Jekyll and deploy the generated static files to any web host.
FAQ
Is Feature Blog free?
Yes, Feature Blog is released under the MIT License, so it is free to use, modify, and distribute for personal or commercial projects.
Does Feature Blog require a database?
No, Feature Blog is a Jekyll theme that generates static HTML files. It has no database; content is managed as Markdown files.
Can I reuse Feature Blog on an existing Jekyll site?
Yes, the README provides setup instructions for an existing Jekyll site, including a sample _config.yml showing how to configure pagination, comments, kramdown settings, and gem dependencies.
Does Feature Blog have built-in search?
Yes, the theme includes Ajax-based search, and it also generates a sitemap for search engine crawlers.
