Normally, there are two ways to use a Jekyll theme.

  1. Specifying the Jekyll theme you use in _config.yml, for example, theme: minima. The disadvantage is that you can’t do completely free customization.
  2. Copying all needed files from the Jekyll theme into your repository. The disadvantage is that you can’t easily track the recent updates of the Jekyll theme.

However, thanks to the jekyll-remote-theme plugin, you can use any GitHub-hosted theme. That means if you love a Jekyll theme, you can fork the repository and do your customized modification in there. Then you can use this new theme in your Jekyll site.

For example, I had forked the minima theme and checkouted a branch alex to do customization. For using this theme, I just need to

  1. Specify gem "jekyll-remote-theme" in Gemfile.

  2. Add the following to _config.yml.

     plugins:
   - jekyll-remote-theme

 remote_theme: alexhuangster/minima@alex

Now, I finished the separation of theme and contents.