Sustain is a Jekyll-based personal blog template built with Bootstrap and designed to be hosted for free on GitHub Pages. This open-source theme (MIT license) provides a simple static website with a home page, blog listing, post layout, and a projects page, all rendered from Markdown content by the Jekyll static site generator.
What is Sustain?
Sustain is a personal blog theme that runs on Jekyll, a static site generator written in Ruby, and styles its pages with the Bootstrap front-end framework. It takes Markdown posts and configuration from a _config.yml file and outputs a fully static HTML site ready to upload to GitHub Pages, Netlify, or any static host. The project is maintained by the jekyllt organization on GitHub and is released under the MIT License.
Key Features
- Bootstrap styling — The theme is built with Bootstrap (getbootstrap.com), giving you responsive layout components and utility classes out of the box.
- Jekyll powered — Uses Jekyll v3.9.0 to convert Markdown content into static HTML, compatible with Ruby v2.6.3.
- GitHub Pages ready — Included GitHub Actions workflow (jekyll_build.yml) builds the site and pushes the output to the gh-pages branch automatically.
- Multiple page layouts — Includes home, blog, post, and projects page templates, as shown in the theme's screenshots.
- Flexible deployment options — Can be built locally with
bundle exec jekyll serve, via Travis-CI with jekyll-travis, or deployed to Netlify with its free starter offer. - Open source license — Released under the MIT License, so you can copy, modify, and use it freely, including for commercial projects.
Who is it for?
Sustain is aimed at developers and writers who want a minimal, no-frills blog hosted on GitHub Pages without maintaining a separate content management system. It's also suitable for programmers who want to showcase their open-source projects on a dedicated projects page, and for hobbyists who want to learn Jekyll by studying a clean, working theme.
What can you do with it?
- Personal bloggers: Write posts in Markdown, place them in the _posts folder, and let Jekyll generate a static blog that loads quickly and costs nothing to host.
- Open-source developers: Use the projects page to list and link to your GitHub repositories, giving visitors a compact portfolio.
- Portfolio users: Create a simple personal landing page with a profile picture (the theme includes a placeholder image from Pexels) and links to your content.
How does it work?
To run Sustain locally, clone the repository's master branch and execute bundle exec jekyll serve inside the directory. Jekyll generates a _site folder with the complete static website; upload the contents of that folder to a GitHub repository's master branch (for a personal page like username.github.io) or to the gh-pages branch (for a project page). The repository also includes a GitHub Actions workflow that automates building and pushing to gh-pages.
Pricing
Sustain is free. It is released under the MIT License, and the source code is publicly available on GitHub with no paid tiers or premium features.
FAQ
Is Sustain free?
Yes, Sustain is completely free. It is released under the MIT License, which allows you to use, modify, and distribute the theme without payment, including in commercial projects.
How do I deploy Sustain to GitHub Pages?
You can use the included GitHub Actions workflow, which builds the site and pushes the resulting files to the gh-pages branch automatically. Alternatively, build locally with bundle exec jekyll serve and upload the generated _site folder to your repository.
What versions of Jekyll and Ruby does Sustain support?
The maintainers report that the install builds well with Ruby v2.6.3 and Jekyll v3.9.0. If you run into build issues with different versions, you can log them on the project's issue tracker.
Does Sustain have a projects page?
Yes, Sustain includes a projects page template. The theme's screenshots show a dedicated layout for listing projects, which you can customize with your own project links and descriptions.
