Getting summary\image previews to work— github theme chooser - Jekyll Slate Theme

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1

I was really loving how simple the theme chooser was to get me up and running until I tried to add images for twitter and other places that will display link previews.

I’m not sure if I need to add and customize _include _templates and other such files…

I’ve read all of the readme’s from github, to jekyll, to the seo plugin, and twitters own guidelines… as well as whatever else I could find.

Any changes I make that improve one thing, breaks another. So I can have preview images for a post (on twitter and\or discord) and a broken homepage or I can have a working site w no previews… and the homepage preview image won’t populate anywhere.

At this point I’m thinking that the shortcut of using the theme-chooser is making everything more complicated.

I smashed my head against the keyboard enough, so I’m gonna think about something else for now…

I would really appreciate any input or guidance.

[edit] Now I’m looking at this post, and it suggests that using my readme instead of creating an index.html can cause unexpected build problems:

Also realizing that github.community is probably the better place to ask questions about their theme chooser, but I was at my whits end and found this forum first.

Is where I’m collecting resources… so if you have any favorite guides pls let me know.

2

yes, so to answer my own question:

My previews work now, and I think that creating an index.md and adding layout: default to its front matter is what solved my problem.

besides that each page has the following in the front-matter…

title:   
description:
image:

basically everything sort of works as expected now… I think due to creating an index.md and adding layout: default to its front matter.

some other settings in the _config.yml obviously

O1GwG15.png549×507 34.2 KB

so that is, I believe, the bare basics of using the theme chooser, and with minimal additional configuration, having links that show a preview on twitter and other sites\apps.

I’m gradually stripping away various parameters as I tweak and see what’s what.