How to change the default order pages in Jekyll?

Question

My blog is built with Jekyll on Github. In the navigation bar, the default order is Pages, Messages, About, Archives. I want to change the list to Pages, Archives, About, Messages. What should I do?

I think it is related to the code below

{% assign pages_list = site.pages %}

I think site.pages is what I should change, but I don't know how.

Answer 1

The order of your navbar menu is determined by the HTML template in _layout (which may be pulling in HTML fragments from _includes.

It sounds like your navbar is being programatically generated from the list of pages provided in site.pages using the liquid code

{% assign pages_list = site.pages %}

If you have only a small number of pages, you may prefer to just write the list out manually. site.pages is Jekyll's alphabetical list of all pages. Nothing stops you from just hardcoding this instead:

 <div class="navbar" id="page-top">
      <div class="navbar-inner">
        <div class="container">
          <a class="brand" href="/">EverCoding.net</a>
          <ul class="nav">
            <li><a href="/pages.html">Pages</a></li>        
        <li><a href="/archive.html">Archive</a></li>
        <li><a href="/about.html">About</a></li>
        <li><a href="/messages.html">Messages</a></li>

Whereas I'm guessing at the moment you have that list generated programmatically, perhaps by following the way Jekyll-bootstrap does with liquid code:

<div class="navbar">
      <div class="navbar-inner">
        <div class="container">
          <a class="brand" href="{{ HOME_PATH }}">{{ site.title }}</a>
          <ul class="nav">
            {% assign pages_list = site.pages %}
            {% assign group = 'navigation' %}
            {% include JB/pages_list %}
          </ul>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>

The liquid code in this second example is handy if you really want to determine the menu each time, but if you have a static menu in a static order you are probably best coding it by hand as in my first example, rather than modifying the liquid code to sort.

If you could link to the Jekyll source, rather than the published blog, we could be more specific.

Answer 2

You can create custom order of your menu items like this:

1) In your pages front matter add the order field (you can name it as you preffer)

---
layout: default
published: true
title: Page title
order: 1
---

2) When getting pages, apply the 'sort' filter

{% assign sorted_pages = site.pages | sort:"order" %}
{% for node in sorted_pages %}
  <li><a href="{{node.url}}">{{node.title}}</a></li>
{% endfor %}

You'll end up with an ordered (ASC) list of pages, based on the 'order' field value you add to each page.

Answer 3

Update: Some ordering functionality seems to have been added to Jekyll: https://github.com/plusjade/jekyll-bootstrap/commit/4eebb4462c24de612612d6f4794b1aaaa08dfad4

Update: check out comment by Andy Jackson below – "name" might need to be changed to "path".

This seems to work for me:

{% assign sorted_pages = site.pages | sort:"name" %}
{% for node in sorted_pages %}
  <li><a href="{{node.url}}">{{node.title}}</a></li>
{% endfor %}

name is file name. I renamed pages to 00-index.md, 01-about.md etc. Sorting worked, but pages were generated with those prefixes, which looked ugly especially for 00-index.html.

To fix that I override permalinks:

---
layout: default
title: News
permalink: "index.html"
---

Sadly, this won't work with custom attributes, because they are not accessible as methods on Page class:

{% assign sorted_pages = site.pages | sort:"weight" %} #bummer

Answer 4

I made pages.yml file in the _data directory it is look like similar:

- url: pages/test.html
  title: Pages
  group: navigation
- url: pages/front.html
  title: Front
  group: navigation

And I changed the default.html (from site.pages to site.data.pages):

<ul class="nav">
  {% assign pages_list = site.data.pages %}
  {% assign group = 'navigation' %}
  {% include JB/pages_list %}
</ul>

And now I can use this yml file for the menu.

Answer 5

You could see the documentation: http://jekyll.tips/jekyll-casts/navigation/

There are good examples and explanations with navigation_weight.

---
layout: page
title: About
permalink: /about/
navigation_weight: 10
---

For minima:

<div>
     {% assign navigation_pages = site.pages | sort: 'navigation_weight' %}
        {% for p in navigation_pages %}
          {% if p.navigation_weight %}
            {% if p.title %}
            <a class="page-link" href="{{ p.url | relative_url }}">{{ p.title | escape }}</a>
            {% endif %}
          {% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
      </div>

Answer 6

I'm using Jekyll v2.5.3 and you can also number your actual markdown files (order them that way) and since you're using the Front Matter block you can still keep the titles and permalinks as you want them.

The parser will order your page links that way.
I.e.:

01_about.md
02_photos.md
03_projects.md
99_contact.md

Answer 7

You were on the right path. You could sort by a custom variable named, say, 'order'.

In header.html insert and extra row:

{% assign pages_list = (site.pages | sort: 'order') %}

Then replace site.pages with pages_list in the for statement:

{% for my_page in pages_list %}
   {% if my_page.title %}
      <a class="page-link" href="{{ my_page.url | relative_url }}">{{ my_page.title | escape }}</a>
   {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

Then add 'order' into the YAML front matter for each page, and set it a suitable value:

---
layout: page
title: About
permalink: /about/
order: 0
---

Answer 8

The Jekyll Bootstrap 3 template requires that you include group navigation in the Jekyll header. Building on @Wojtek's answer, you can modify JB3's pages_list to use this group field to both filter, and sort.

Before calling pages_list, sort by group:

{% assign sorted_pages = site.pages | sort:"group" %}

Then, simply change one line in pages_list:

{% if group == null or group == node.group %} -> {% if group == null or node.group contains group %}

Now you can specify the group to be navigation-00, navigation-01, without having to rename your files or set up any permalinks, and you get sorting for free.

Answer 9

I made a simple plugin some time ago to sort pages according to a page_order array you can define your _config.yml:

pages_order: ['index', 'summary', 'overview', 'part1', 'part2', 'conclusion', 'notes']

It exposes page.prev and page.next in templates to allow navigation:

{% if page.prev %}
 <a id="previous-page" href="{{page.prev}}.html">Previous</a>
{% endif %}

{% if page.next %}
 <a id="next-page" href="{{page.next}}.html">Next</a>
{% endif %} 

Note: Does not work on Github Pages.