What are some good ways to implement breadcrumbs on a Jekyll site?

Question

I\'m aware that there are single-level breadcrumbs in http://raphinou.github.com/jekyll-base/ but I\'m looking for some good ways to have breadcrumbs on a Jekyll sit

Answer 1

Here's another way to approach this: rather than generating the breadcrumbs for a post from its URL, instead use the post's collection, categories, date (year, month and day) and title to form the breadcrumbs. This means that the breadcrumbs don't have to match with the URL (although they can still do if you want them to). And it means that the breadcrumbs for categories, years, etc can find and link to pages for those categories, years, etc if the pages exist.

The generated breadcrumbs look like this:

Home > Posts > Example Category > 2019 > Dec > 23 > Breadcrumbs in Jekyll

There are options for omitting each of the home, collection, categories, date and title components, so you can customize the breadcrumbs to look how you want.

Breadcrumbs will automatically link to a corresponding page, if the page exists. For example the home breadcrumb will link to a page at URL "/". A breadcrumbs for a "foo" category will link to a page at "/foo/" if one exists (otherwise the breadcrumb will just not be linked). A breadcrumb for the year 2019 will link to a "/2019/" page. And so on.

The templates are pasted below. Usage: {% include breadcrumbs.html %}. See my gist and blog post for more detail.

_includes/breadcrumbs.html:

{% assign omit_home = include.omit_home %}
{% if omit_home == nil %}
{% assign omit_home = site.breadcrumbs_omit_home %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_collection = include.omit_collection %}
{% if omit_collection == nil %}
{% assign omit_collection = site.breadcrumbs_omit_collection %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_categories = include.omit_categories %}
{% if omit_categories == nil %}
{% assign omit_categories = site.breadcrumbs_omit_categories %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_date = include.omit_date %}
{% if omit_date == nil %}
{% assign omit_date = site.breadcrumbs_omit_date %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_year = include.omit_year %}
{% if omit_year == nil %}
{% assign omit_year = site.breadcrumbs_omit_year %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_month = include.omit_month %}
{% if omit_month == nil %}
{% assign omit_month = site.breadcrumbs_omit_month %}
{% endif %}

{% assign omit_day = include.omit_day %}
{% if omit_day == nil %}
{% assign omit_day = site.breadcrumbs_omit_day %}
{% endif %}

{% assign breadcrumbs = "" | split: "" %}

{% if page.url == "/" %}
{% assign is_front_page = true %}
{% else %}
{% assign is_front_page = false %}
{% endif %}

{% unless is_front_page %}
{% assign page = include.page | default: page %}
{% unless omit_home %}
    {% capture breadcrumb_text %}{% include breadcrumb_text.html url="/" default="Home" %}{% endcapture %}
    {% assign breadcrumb_text = breadcrumb_text | split: "