--- layout: page title: Configuring Octopress date: July 19 2011 sidebar: false footer: false --- [« Previous, Octopress Setup](/docs/setup) I've tried to keep configuring Octopress fairly simple and you'll probably only ever change the `Rakefile` and the `_config.yml`. Here's a list of files for configuring Octopress. ``` sh _config.yml # Main config (Jekyll's settings) Rakefile # Configs for deployment config.rb # Compass config config.ru # Rack config ``` Configurations in the `Rakefile` are mostly related to deployment and you probably won't have to touch them unless you're using rsync. ## Blog Configuration In the `_config.yml` there are three sections for configuring your Octopress Blog. **Spoiler:** You must change `url`, and you'll probably change `title`, `subtitle` and `author` and enable some 3rd party services. ### Main Configs ``` yaml url: # For rewriting urls for RSS, etc title: # Used in the header and title tags subtitle: # A description used in the header author: # Your name, for RSS, Copyright, Metadata simple_search: # Search engine for simple site search subscribe_rss: # Url for your blog's feed, defauts to /atom.xml subscribe_email: # Url to subscribe by email (service required) email: # Email address for the RSS feed if you want it. ``` **Note:** If your site is a multi-author blog, you may want to set this config's `author` to the name of your company or project, and add author metadata to posts and pages to give proper attribution for those works. ### Jekyll & Plugins These configurations are used by Jekyll and Plugins. If you're not familiar with Jekyll, you should probably have a look at the [configuration docs](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/Configuration) which lists more options that aren't covered here. ``` yaml root: # Mapping for relative urls (default: /) permalink: # Permalink structure for blog posts source: # Directory for site source files destination: # Directory for generated site files plugins: # Directory for Jekyll plugins code_dir: # Directory for code snippets (for include_code plugin) category_dir: # Directory for generated blog category pages pygments: # Toggle python pygments syntax highlighting paginate: # Posts per page on the blog index recent_posts: # Number of recent posts to appear in the sidebar default_asides: # Configure what shows up in the sidebar and in what order blog_index_asides: # Optional sidebar config for blog index page post_asides: # Optional sidebar config for post layout page_asides: # Optional sidebar config for page layout ``` If you want to change the way permalinks are written for your blog posts, see [Jekyll's permalink docs](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/Permalinks). **Note:** Jekyll has a `baseurl` config which adds a redirect for Jekyll's WEBrick server for subdirectory support. This works fine if you want to use the WEBrick server, but for any other web service you have to add support for the redirect. Instead, Octopress uses the `root` config and offers a rake task `set_root_dir[/some/directory]` which moves the output directory into a subdirectory and updates configurations. [(see Deploying Octopress)](/docs/deploying).

3rd Party Settings

These third party integrations are already set up for you. Simply fill in the configurations and they'll be added to your site. - **Twitter** - *Setup a sidebar twitter feed, follow button, and tweet button (for sharing posts and pages).* - **Google Plus One** - *Setup sharing for posts and pages on Google's plus one network.* - **Pinboard** - *Share your recent Pinboard bookmarks in the sidebar.* - **Delicious** - *Share your recent Delicious bookmarks in the sidebar.* - **Disqus Comments** - *Add your disqus short name to enable disqus comments on your site.* - **Google Analytics** - *Add your tracking id to enable Google Analytics tracking for your site.* The Octopress layouts read these configurations and only include the javascript and html necessary for the enabled services. [Next, Blogging with Octopress »](/docs/blogging/)