Unit 7: Themes, Plugins, and Extension Boundaries

You built the important Jekyll mechanisms yourself first.

Now you can evaluate abstractions without mistaking them for magic.

This Unit treats themes and plugins as dependencies with source/build responsibilities, not a shopping list.

Unit question

When does a theme or plugin reduce useful work, and when does it create more dependency, portability, or maintenance risk than the feature is worth?

Unit path

1. What a Theme Actually Provides
2. Gem-Based Themes
3. Find the Theme Files You Cannot See
4. Override a Theme Safely
5. What Plugins Add to the Build
6. Plugin Categories and Build Hooks
7. Dependency and Portability Tradeoffs
8. GitHub Pages Plugin Constraints
9. Theme vs Custom Layout Decision
10. Plugin Decision Lab
11. Unit Build: Extension Decision Record

Unit artifact

A theme decision, bounded plugin experiment, extension architecture diagram, and portability/dependency record.

Upstream foundation

This Unit adapts Jekyll's pinned official Themes, Plugins, Configuration, and Deployment documentation. GitHub Pages deployment/plugin constraints are cross-checked against current official GitHub Pages documentation because hosting behavior changes independently of the pinned Jekyll source.