this post outlines how i’m generating this feed as a separate, secondary feed using jekyll collections. this is completely possible using the current version (as of this post: 0.11.0) of the jekyll-feed plugin. this plugin is included in all new jekyll projects that have been generated with the jekyll new command.

the main blog feed for this site is at the default location:

https://benjaminwil.info/feed.xml

and the feed you’re reading from now is at:

https://benjaminwil.into/antisocial/feed.xml

collection names

there is one caveat: jekyll-feed doesn’t provide a way to set a custom name for your secondary feed. any other feeds you make use basic site metadata:

  • your site.title or site.name variable’s value
  • a pipe character with some spaces around it ( | )
  • and your collection name – with the first letter capitalized

this can look a little bit stupid if you aren’t careful:

Cool Website | My-new-collection

yeah, that’s the feed name that would show up in your friends’ rss readers.

i have a pull request open on the jekyll-feed repository that fixes this. but if you want custom names right now, you’ll have to use my fork of the jekyll-feed gem.

step one: update the jekyll-feed gem

when you create a new jekyll site using the jekyll new command, the version of the jekyll-feed plugin included is ~> 0.6. to create a secondary feed, you need to manually update your Gemfile to use jekyll-feed ~> 0.11:

ruby # Gemfile ... group :jekyll_plugins do gem "jekyll-feed", "~> 0.11" end

and add this git argument if you’re comfortable using my fork of the plugin (until my – or another similar – pull request has been merged):

ruby # Gemfile ... group :jekyll_plugins do gem "jekyll-feed", "~> 0.11", git: https://github.com/benjaminwil/jf end

step two: create a new collection

in your site’s _config.yml file, you need to add the name and metadata for the collection you intend to use for the feed. in my case:

yml # _config.yml ... collections: antisocial: output: true permalink: /antisocial/:name

output: true ensures a separate file is generated for each item in the collection (the permalink page), and the permalink: setting is probably familiar to you: use it to set your collection post’s uris.

the jekyll permalinks docs include a list of available collections permalinks variables. the variable i’m using (:name) just attaches the filename to the uri.

your new collection can be created in the directory _collection_name (unless you’ve set a custom collections_dir: in your _config.yml). in my case: _antisocial.

step three: pick a layout

you can either use your standard post layout or make a new one. if you’re a jekyll user, you likely know all about layouts: so i won’t go into any more detail here.

you can either set a layout: value in the frontmatter for every collection item, or you can set each collection item’s layout globally from your _config.yml:

yml # _config.yml ... defaults: - scope: path: "" # an empty string here means all files in the project type: "antisocial" values: layout: "your_preferred_layout"

this is some ugly yaml, but that’s what is has to be according to the front matter defaults docs.

step four: configure the feed

we’re pretty much done now. we just have to configure the secondary feed information using the provided jekyll-feed configuration settings.

again, in your _config.yml:

yml # _config.yml ... feed: collections: antisocial: path: "/antisocial/feed.xml"

where antisocial: is the name of your collection and the path: value is a string with your preferred feed location.

now that you’ve configured the feed, you can start to add new posts to your collection directory.

note that if you’re keeping a blog you still need to use date: front matter to ensure your posts get to the feed.