cloud.gov

This site uses the cloud.gov Pages USWDS Jekyll template. cloud.gov Pages runs on cloud.gov and supports the development of this template. By leveraging this template cloud.gov get the benefits of a maintained template as well as a way to test out new functionality in the template.

This Jekyll theme uses the U.S. Web Design System v 2.0 and provides developers a starter kit and reference implementation for cloud.gov Pages websites.

This code uses the Jekyll site engine and built with Ruby. If you prefer to use Javascript, check out pages-uswds-gatsby, which uses Gatsby site engine.

This site uses a customized U.S. Web Design System theme and strives to be compliant with requirements set by 21st Century IDEA Act. The standards require that a website or digital service:

• is accessible to individuals with disabilities;
• has a consistent appearance;
• does not duplicate any legacy websites (the legislation also requires agencies to ensure that legacy websites are regularly reviewed, removed, and consolidated);
• has a search function;
• uses an industry standard secure connection;
• is designed around user needs with data-driven analysis influencing management and development decisions, using qualitative and quantitative data to determine user goals, needs, and behaviors, and continually test the website, web-based form, web-based application, or digital service to ensure that user needs are addressed;
• allows for user customization; and
• is mobile-friendly.

Key Functionality

This repository contains the following examples and functionality:

✅ Publish blog posts, press releases, announcements, etc. To modify this code, check out blog/index.html, which manages how the posts are listed. You should then check out _layouts/post.html to see how individual posts are structured.

✅ Publish single one-off pages. Instead of creating lots of folders throughout the root directory, you should put single pages in _pages folder and change the permalink at the top of each page. Use sub-folders only when you really need to.

✅ Publish data (for example: job listings, links, references), you can use the template _layouts/data.html. Just create a file in you _pages folder with the following options:

---
title: Collections Page
layout: data
permalink: /collections
datafile: collections
---

The reference to datafile referers to the name of the file in _data/collections.yml and loops through the values. Feel free to modify this as needed.

✅ There are two different kinds of pages, one does not have a side bar navigation, and the other uses _includes/sidenav.html. You can enable this option by adding sidenav: true to your page front matter.

---
title: Document with Sidenav
layout: page
sidenav: true
permalink: /document-with-sidenav
---

✅ Enable search with Search.gov by adding option to _config.yml.

---
searchgov:
  endpoint: https://search.gov  # You should not change this.
  affiliate: pages-uswds-example # replace this with your search.gov account 
  access_key: your-access-key # This is placeholder. Not private.
  inline: true #this renders the results on the same domain. Otherwise, it will render the results in the search.gov domain
---

How to edit cloud.gov content

• Non-developers should focus on editing markdown content in the _posts, _docs, and _pages folder. Generally most of the cloud.gov content will be in the _docs file.

• Pricing updates can go directly into _data/pricing.yml file and if any of the aws services need to be updated that can occur in the _data/services.yml file.

• We try to keep configuration options to a minimum so you can easily change functionality. You should review _config.yml to see the options that are available to you. There are a few values on top that you need to change. They refer to the agency name and contact information. The rest of _config.yml has a range of more advanced options.

• The contents inside _assets/ folder store your Javascript, SCSS/CSS, images, and other media assets are managed by jekyll-assets. Assets are combined, compressed, and automatically available in your theme

• If you look at package.json you will see that the npm run pages command that will run when running on the cloud.gov Pages platform.

• Do not edit files in the _site/ folder. These files are auto-generated, and any change you make in the folder will be overwritten.

• To edit the look and feel of the site, you need to edit files in _includes/ folder, which render key components, like the menu, side navigation, and logos.

• Some pages are styled to be .html rather than markdown you can find these in the _layouts folder.

  • The homepage can be editted more directly by manipulating the .html in home.html
  • The pricing page is mostly edited with the pricing.html
  • The getting-started page is in the _pages/sign-up.md folder.

• _layouts/ may require the least amount of editing of all the files since they are primarily responsible for printing the content.

• search/index.html is used by search.gov.

• If you make major changes to content, let the #search team know and they can reindex the site. More information on the search.gov account here: https://search.usa.gov/sites/6217

Updating content on your own computer

$ git clone https://github.com/cloud-gov/cg-site
$ cd cg-site

Note that when built by cloud.gov Pages, npm run pages is used instead of the build script.

Install dependencies and run app

$ npm install
$ bundle install
$ npm start

Open your web browser to localhost:4000 to view your site.

Testing

$ npm test

Link checking

This project uses lychee and the accompanying GitHub action to verify that all the links in this documentation are valid.

Default configuration for lychee can be found in lychee.toml.

Default URL patterns that are ignored by lychee can be found in .lycheeignore.

Running locally

First, install lychee:

brew install lychee

To run lychee locally, use the link-checker npm script:

# can use any globbing pattern or filepath
GITHUB_TOKEN=<your-github-token> npm run link-checker -- ./_site/**/*.html 

You can also use multiple patterns/filepaths:

GITHUB_TOKEN=<your-github-token> npm run link-checker -- ./*.md ./_site/**/*.html 

Including a GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable will reduce the number of 429 responses returned by GitHub, since by default GitHub throttles requests without a token.

When you run this script, results from the lychee link scan will be generated in lychee-out.md so that you can review and address any errors.

Technologies you should be familiarize yourself with

• Jekyll - The primary site engine that builds your code and content.
• Front Matter - The top of each page/post includes keywords within -- tags. This is meta data that helps Jekyll build the site, but you can also use it to pass custom variables.
• U.S. Web Design System v 2.0

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING for additional information.

Public domain

This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:

This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.

All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.

See CONTRIBUTING for additional information.