# Jekyll Snippets

> Explore handy Jekyll snippets for enhancing static site generation, including unique presentation of the latest post and consistent post excerpts.

- Canonical: https://www.russ.cloud/2014/02/02/jekyll-snippets/
- Published: 2014-02-02
- Author: Russ McKendrick
- Tags: Code, Tools

---

Had a go at converting a mostly static but dynamically rendered site to use Jekyll yesterday, it was a lot more straight forward than I thought it was going to be.

As part of the conversion I needed to display the first post differently, after consulting the all knowing Google I settled on the following method;

```html frame="terminal" title="Jekyll Snippets 1/3"
{% for post in site.posts offset: 0 limit: 1 %}
<div class="some-style">
<a href="/assets/2014-02-02-jekyll-snippets/{{post.url}}">
<h3 class='news-title'>{{ post.title }}</h3>
<span class='news-date'>{{ post.date | date_to_string }}</span>
</a>
<p>{{ page.excerpt }} <a href='{{post.url}}'><span class='read-more'> Read more</span></a></p>
</div>
```


Getting the rest of the posts;

```html frame="terminal" title="Jekyll Snippets 2/3"
{% for post in site.posts offset: 1 limit: 4 %}
<div class="some-other-style">
<a href="/assets/2014-02-02-jekyll-snippets/{{post.url}}">
<h3 class='news-title'>{{ post.title }}</h3>
<span class='news-date'>{{ post.date | date_to_string }}</span>
</a>
<p>{{ page.excerpt }} <a href='{{post.url}}'><span class='read-more'> Read more</span></a></p>
</div>
{% endfor %}
```


that worked apart from I need more consistancy with the `page.excerpt` to keep things a little more uniform, the following code fitted the bill nicely;
```html frame="terminal" title="Jekyll Snippets 3/3"
{{ post.content | strip_html | truncatewords:75 }}
```


it even added `...` to the end automagically.

Also, if you don’t know what Jekyll is then have a look at [the website](http://jekyllrb.com) or dive straight in with the following simple install guide above.

I will keep the [Gist](https://gist.github.com/russmckendrick/8768334) updated as I do more stuff.