# Switching themes

**URL:** <https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [December 2, 2020, 2:49am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304 "2020-12-02T02:49:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rohanlopez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9bcb4/32.png) [@rohanlopez](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/rohanlopez)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 2:49am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304/1 "2020-12-02T02:49:09Z")

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Hello, I recently tried switching from the initial minima theme to minima, and followed this documentation [https://jekyllrb.com/docs/themes/#installing-a-theme](https://jekyllrb.com/docs/themes/#installing-a-theme).

 ![Screen Shot 2020-12-01 at 6.47.36 PM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/uploads/jekyllrb/original/2X/6/67a7a5d339a321a9fb5622b878ff545f19f16013.png) However when i try to run it locally, it won’t work. any help would be greatly appreciated!

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**Author:** ![MichaelCurrin](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.jekyllrb.com/michaelcurrin/32/2340_2.png) [@MichaelCurrin](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/MichaelCurrin)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 10:12am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304/2 "2020-12-02T10:12:18Z")

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I assume you mean to **minimal** not minima.

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**Author:** ![MichaelCurrin](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.jekyllrb.com/michaelcurrin/32/2340_2.png) [@MichaelCurrin](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/MichaelCurrin)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 10:21am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304/3 "2020-12-02T10:21:33Z")

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You need to read up on layouts in the docs.

When you do a build and have `layout: page` set, jekyll looks for page.html here

- Your `_layouts/` dir
- then in the theme’s `_layouts` dir in `vendor/bundle/...`

Your quickstart site worked initially because Minima has a page.html layout

But Minimal does not.

> **[pages-themes/minimal](https://github.com/pages-themes/minimal/tree/master/_layouts)**
>
> Minimal is a Jekyll theme for GitHub Pages. Contribute to pages-themes/minimal development by creating an account on GitHub.

Therefore you must change the .md files to use another layout that exists like `default`. This is the simplest solution to your problem.

Or you can create `_layouts/page.html` in your project. I would not copy and paste page.html from Minima as you’ll have CSS classes you don’t have.  
Maybe you can use the theme’s post.html to create page.html

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MichaelCurrin](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.jekyllrb.com/michaelcurrin/32/2340_2.png) [@MichaelCurrin](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/u/MichaelCurrin)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 10:22am UTC](https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/switching-themes/5304/4 "2020-12-02T10:22:12Z")

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In general, a _page_ layout would show an H1 tag and then content on the page. Maybe inside a `main` element and maybe in a `section` element depending how you want to do the HTML.

Contrast with post.html which has post-specific fields like author and date.

And home.html which could be a list of posts.