sandbox

A GitHub Pages sandbox holding demos and experiments too small for a real project, where the author also learned Jekyll and worked around GitHub's plugin restrictions.

The repository is the source for a GitHub Pages site that functions as a sandbox. It collects demos and examples that do not fit any main project, a scratch pad where things might roll into something real later or just get tested out. The author's blog, BenKnowsCode, points to the site regularly. Most of the content is exactly the kind of thing that is too small or too early for a dedicated project.

Part of the point was learning Jekyll. The README says the author wanted to try Jekyll to build a site on GitHub, so the sandbox doubles as a test bed for the static site generator while holding the demo content. The two purposes share one repository without much ceremony.

There is a concrete reason the source sits in this repo rather than just the generated pages. The author wanted tags to work on pages the way they do on posts, which meant custom Jekyll plugins. GitHub disables those plugins on the Pages site, so automatic rendering was off the table. The workaround is to keep the source here, build the site, and push the generated output to the Pages repository. The plugins directory shows the changes that were made.

The blog covers the experience in more detail, and the sandbox homepage lives at bseth99.github.com. Together they turn what could be a throwaway repo into a documented experiment, with the reasoning recorded in both places.

• Source 1 · Project repository
• Source 2 · README