Folio is a Jekyll template for writing and publishing technical books on the web. It is inspired by the visual style of Shape Up and Getting Real by 37signals: a clean, reader-first layout focused on long-form prose.
This site you are reading is the template running on itself — every feature described in these chapters is live on this page. Use the menu (☰, top left) to jump between chapters, select any text to share it, or toggle the theme with the button in the corner.
What you get
- Chapter-based content written in plain Markdown, grouped into book parts.
- A sidebar table of contents generated automatically from your chapters.
- Light and dark themes with a manual toggle and system-preference support.
- A resume bookmark that remembers where each reader left off.
- A share-on-selection popover for quoting passages.
- Print-friendly styles for exporting to PDF.
- A modular, dependency-free CSS architecture (no build step, no framework).
Requirements
- Ruby >= 3.0
- Bundler
- Jekyll ~> 4.4
The template ships with only two gems (Gemfile):
jekyll and webrick (the local server, required on Ruby 3.0+).
Quick start
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload
This starts a development server at http://localhost:4000. With
--livereload, any change you save is reflected in the browser instantly.
To generate the static site without a server (for deployment), run:
bundle exec jekyll build
The compiled site is written to _site/.
Project map
_config.yml # Global book configuration
index.html # Cover / landing page (uses the `home` layout)
_chapters/ # Your book content, one Markdown file per chapter
_layouts/ # Page templates: default, home, chapter
_includes/ # Reusable partials: head, toc, menu, footer, book-info
assets/
css/ # Modular stylesheets (variables, base, components, theme…)
js/ # Vanilla JS: menu, theme-toggle, bookmark, share-popover
How to read the rest
The chapters are ordered as a tutorial:
- Getting Started covers the day-to-day: adding chapters, the table of contents, and writing your content.
- Customization covers making it yours: changing colors and fonts, the light and dark themes, the reader features, and how to print and publish.
Each chapter is self-contained, so you can also jump straight to the topic you need from the menu.