Common Configuration Values

Configuration is not a checklist of keys to copy.

It is a model of your site.

Identity values

title: My Portfolio
description: Projects and technical learning.

These can become site.title and site.description in templates.

URL values

url: "https://example.github.io"
baseurl: "/my-portfolio"

These describe the production addressing model.

Collection values

collections:
  projects:
    output: true

This changes what content types Jekyll recognizes and whether documents receive output pages.

Defaults

defaults:
  - scope:
      path: ""
      type: "projects"
    values:
      layout: project

Defaults reduce repeated front matter.

Plugins

Later you may have:

plugins:
  - jekyll-seo-tag

That changes the build extension set.

Do not copy production values from another person

If you clone an example with:

url: "https://someone-else.example"

and never change it, generated absolute URLs can be wrong while the local site still looks fine.

Configuration is source code for your build assumptions.

Portfolio action

Annotate your _config.yml with a separate evidence document:

Key:
Owner/purpose:
Affected pages/build phase:
What failure looks like:

Checkpoint

Remove one unused configuration key if you have one, or justify why every current key belongs.