# Completely disable theme, only use own custom layouts
**URL:** https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/completely-disable-theme-only-use-own-custom-layouts/7700
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [October 3, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/completely-disable-theme-only-use-own-custom-layouts/7700 "2022-10-03T01:55:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@remino](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/remino)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/completely-disable-theme-only-use-own-custom-layouts/7700/1 "2022-10-03T01:55:51Z")
Hi,
I don’t want a theme. I don’t need a theme. I don’t care about the themes that exist already. I just want to write my own layouts as I need them and go.
I’m only trying to publish a site on GitHub Pages. I may also want to publish the site elsewhere too.
Thing is Jekyll is incredibly stubborn on making me use themes I do not want, or ignoring layouts I’ve written.
## What I use
Using Jekyll 4.2.2 with Ruby 3.1.2, on macOS 12.6.
## Setup
### \_config.yml:
```yaml
layouts_dir: layouts
source: src
```
### layouts/default.html
```html
{{ page.title }}
{{ content }}
```
### src/index.md:
```md
# Test
```
## What I’ve tried
- Removing the `layouts` from my config and use the `_layouts` directory instead. No change.
- Not specifying any frontmatter in index.md:
- With the github-pages gem, I just get the default jekyll-theme-primer theme no matter what.
- With the jekyll gem, I get a file listing generated by Webrick.
- Specifying `layout: default` in the frontmatter in index.md:
- With the github-pages gem, I still get the default jekyll-theme-primer theme.
- With the jekyll gem, I’m told it cannot find the default layout and just renders the HTML of the Markdown file without a layout.
My guess is it shouldn’t be this difficult to just tell Jekyll or github-pages to just get rid of the theme, not use one at all, let me just write my own layouts, and use the default one.
So what am I missing here?
---
### Author:  [@michaelbach](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/michaelbach)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2022, 5:10am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/completely-disable-theme-only-use-own-custom-layouts/7700/2 "2022-10-05T05:10:29Z")
Perhaps this helps:
`jekyll new YOUR_PROJECT --blank`
creates a Jekyll scaffold w/o a theme.
When I started with Jekyll the themes were not helping me, I found.