Frond & Frame is a Jekyll-powered GitHub Pages site for a vegan recipe blog, built on the So Simple theme by mmistakes to publish Asian-inspired dishes. The repository contains the complete source code for a live site that serves as a practical example of a minimal, content-focused food blog with no server-side dependencies.
What is Frond & Frame?
Frond & Frame is a static website project developed for the creation and sharing of vegan, often Asian-inspired recipes. It accepts recipe posts written in Markdown and, through the Jekyll static site generator, renders them into a set of static HTML pages that are then hosted and served via GitHub Pages. The project was co-created and authored by a data scientist who explicitly states that their design skills are limited to Tableau dashboards and ggplot visuals, leading them to build the site on the So Simple Jekyll theme from the mmistakes repository to achieve a clean, professional appearance without custom CSS work.
Key Features
- Jekyll static site generation — Converts Markdown content and Liquid templates into static HTML, enabling fast loading speeds and simple deployment.
- GitHub Pages hosting — The entire public site runs on GitHub Pages' free hosting tier, which is tied directly to the repository and rebuilds automatically on every push.
- So Simple theme by mmistakes — A minimalist Jekyll theme that provides a single-column layout, prominent typography, and optional social media links, giving any recipe site a clean, editorial feel.
- Recipe-focused content model — The site is organized around individual recipe posts, with each recipe represented as a separate Markdown file that Jekyll processes into its own page.
- Minimalist design language — The repository's topic tags include minimalist, minimalist-design, and simple, confirming that the site intentionally avoids visual clutter to keep recipes readable.
- Vegan and Asian-inspired editorial direction — The tagline "Vegan Food Doesn't Have to Be Boring" and the topics vegan, veganism, and food-blog indicate that content is specialized rather than generic, which can help with niche audience building.
- Open-source repository — The code is publicly available on GitHub, currently with 1 star, so other developers can fork or adapt the structure for their own projects.
Who is it for?
- Vegan food bloggers — They can use this repository as a ready-made starting point for a recipe website, replacing the sample content with their own dishes while keeping the Jekyll structure intact.
- Data scientists and non-designers — The author's own background as a data scientist shows that the setup is approachable for people who want a professional website but lack formal front-end design skills.
- Developers learning Jekyll — The project demonstrates how to configure a Jekyll site with a third-party theme, configure custom settings, and deploy through GitHub Pages, making it a useful learning reference.
- Home cooks and culinary enthusiasts — Anyone wanting a personal recipe archive can benefit from the simple workflow of adding a Markdown file per recipe and pushing to GitHub.
What can you do with Frond & Frame?
- Publish new recipes — Write a recipe in Markdown, add it to the appropriate directory, and push to GitHub; Jekyll then generates a new static page and updates the site's index and tag pages automatically.
- Customize branding — Change the site title, tagline, and social media handles in the Jekyll configuration file to match a personal brand, as the tagline and title are already distinct to Frond & Frame.
- Adapt the design — Swap the So Simple theme for another Jekyll theme or adjust the existing layout files, since the project uses standard Jekyll directory conventions.
- Use as a portfolio — Even though the focus is recipes, the same structure can be repurposed for any type of blog content, such as essays or photography, due to Jekyll's flexibility.
FAQ
Is Frond & Frame a free template?
Yes, the source code is available on GitHub, and the site is hosted on GitHub Pages, which offers free static hosting for public repositories. The So Simple theme is also free and open source, so there are no costs to run a similar site.
What theme does Frond & Frame use?
Frond & Frame uses the So Simple Jekyll theme, created by the developer known as mmistakes. This theme is designed for minimal, blog-style websites and is maintained in a separate GitHub repository.
How is Frond & Frame deployed?
The site is deployed using GitHub Pages, which automatically builds the Jekyll site from the repository's master branch and serves it at a standard GitHub Pages URL. No manual server configuration is required.
What kind of content does Frond & Frame host?
The site hosts vegan recipes, frequently with Asian inspiration. The tagline emphasizes that vegan food can be exciting, which is the project's core message.
Do I need design skills to use this template?
No — the site is built on a ready-made theme, and the repository's author, a data scientist, built it specifically because they had limited design experience. Adding content only requires editing Markdown files.
