Nord Newsletter — `jekyll-theme-nord-newsletter`

A config-driven Jekyll theme on the Nord palette, extracted from systemhalted.in. It ships a responsive post grid, archive / category / tag pages, a client-side search overlay, a keyboard-driven command-line overlay, collection layouts, optional Giscus comments, and an optional newsletter CTA — all configurable from _config.yml.

Screenshots

The home page in both Nord themes (toggle with the t key):

Dark	Light

Features

Responsive post feed with featured images and excerpts.
Light/dark Nord theme with a t keyboard toggle (defaults to prefers-color-scheme).
Client-side search overlay (elasticlunr) that indexes posts and every output collection — no external service.
Keyboard shortcuts: ? (help), / or s (search), t (theme), m (sidebar), g h/f/k/e/a (go to Home / Featured / Newsletter / Emacs / About).
A webcmd command-line overlay for power users.
Archive, category (taxonomy-grouped), tag, and featured pages.
Collection layouts for newsletters and an Emacs-style note wiki.
Optional Giscus comments and social share buttons.
Sidebar navigation driven by _config.yml.
Math rendering via the KaTeX CDN; table of contents via jekyll-toc.

Install

Add the theme to your site's Gemfile:

gem "jekyll-theme-nord-newsletter"

Then in _config.yml:

theme: jekyll-theme-nord-newsletter
plugins:
  - jekyll-paginate
  - jekyll-gist
  - jekyll-seo-tag
  - jekyll-sitemap
  - jekyll-feed
  - jekyll-toc
paginate: 8
paginate_path: "/page:num"

Install and serve:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

Configuration

Everything site-specific is read from _config.yml; nothing is hardcoded in the theme.

Key	Purpose
`title`, `tagline`, `description`, `url`, `baseurl`	Site identity (used in the masthead, footer, and SEO).
`author.name` / `author.email`	Author identity; email powers the footer and comment fallback.
`author.linkedin` / `author.github`	Footer social links (rendered only when set).
`author.avatar`	Footer avatar path. Defaults to `/assets/images/avatar.jpeg`.
`google_analytics_id`	Enables `gtag.js` when set.
`giscus.*`	Enables Giscus comments. See below.
`newsletter_cta.*`	Newsletter CTA content + optional Kit embed. See below.
`search.suggestions`	List of suggestion chips shown in the empty search overlay.
`sidebar.items`	Sidebar navigation (list of `{title, url}`).

Comments (Giscus)

Comments load only when giscus.repo is set, and only on posts with comments: true in their front matter:

giscus:
  repo:        owner/repo
  repo_id:     R_xxxxxxxx
  category:    Comments
  category_id: DIC_xxxxxxxx
  mapping:     pathname   # optional, defaults to pathname

Get these values from https://giscus.app. Without them, the comments section renders empty and shows an email fallback for no-JS readers.

The newsletter-cta include is used on the newsletter landing page and at the end of each issue. The Kit (ConvertKit) embed only loads when both kit_uid and kit_url are set:

newsletter_cta:
  title:       "My Newsletter"
  lede:        "Occasional essays by email. Free, no spam."
  path:        /newsletter/          # landing page the footer links to
  feed_path:   /feed.xml             # RSS link in the CTA
  footer_blurb: "Get My Newsletter by email, or follow the blog by RSS."  # optional; overrides the footer subscribe sentence
  kit_uid:     abcdef1234            # optional
  kit_url:     https://you.kit.com   # optional

Note: newsletter is also a common collection name (site.newsletter). The CTA config intentionally uses the newsletter_cta key to avoid colliding with the collection.

Categories and tags

Category groupings live in _data/taxonomy.yml. The gem ships an example taxonomy as a default — drop your own _data/taxonomy.yml in your site to override it (Jekyll merges site data over theme data). The categories page groups categories by theme, and the post layout uses the same taxonomy to suggest related posts. Tags are generated from post front matter.

Layouts

Layout	Use
`default`	Base chrome (masthead, sidebar, footer, search, shortcuts).
`page`	Standard content page.
`post`	Blog post: meta, featured image, TOC, share buttons, related posts, comments.
`category`	A single category archive.
`collections`	Generic collection index (set `collection_name` in front matter).
`newsletter`	A newsletter issue (kicker, reading time, CTA, prev/next).
`emacs`	A note-wiki entry (TOC, tags).

Post front matter

---
layout: post
title: Sample Post
date: 2026-01-31
categories: [Technology]
tags: [jekyll, notes]
comments: true
featured: true
toc: true
featured_image: /assets/images/hero.jpg
featured_image_alt: Brief alt text
featured_image_caption: Photo credit or context
description: One-line summary for previews and search.
---

Pages

The theme ships layouts; archive-style pages are starter templates in example/ you can copy to your site root: index.html, archives.html, categories.html, tags.html, featured.html, 404.md, plus kartavya-path.html (newsletter index), emacs.html (collection index), and webcmd/index.html (command-line page).

Collections

Output collections are searchable automatically. To add one:

Define it under collections: with output: true (set collections_dir if you keep collections in a subfolder).
Add docs under collections/_<name>/.
Add a defaults rule to assign a layout, e.g. layout: newsletter.
Optionally add a listing page using layout: collections with collection_name: <name>.

Exclude any document from search with search_exclude: true in its front matter.

Demo site

A runnable demo lives in example/:

bundle config set --local path vendor/bundle
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --source example --destination example/_site --livereload

Assets and styling

CSS: assets/css/nord.css (hand-written, CSS custom properties — no Sass build).
JS: assets/js/script.js (UI + search), assets/js/webcmd.js (search index + command line, Liquid-processed), assets/js/elasticlunr.min.js.
Fonts, Font Awesome, and KaTeX load from CDNs in _includes/head.html.
Favicons and the web manifest live in assets/.

Nord Newsletter — jekyll-theme-nord-newsletter